Nokia Selling Qt Commercial Licencing Business To Digia

Monday, March 07, 2011:  Following a shift to a Windows Phone-centric smartphone strategy, Nokia is now divesting itself of responsibilities with regard to the Qt framework at the heart of Symbian and MeeGo development. In January 2008, Nokia acquired Trolltech, a small Norweigen firm, and its Qt technology, for $153 million. Digia Plc. has signed an agreement with Nokia to acquire the Qt commercial licencing and services business. Through the proposed acquisition, around 3500 desktop and embedded customer companies from various industries are targeted to be transferred to Digia. The transaction is expected to be closed by the end of March 2011. Nokia says it will continue to invest in future development of Qt for the benefit of all users, both commercial and LGPL.

As a result, the commercial licencing and service operations business is to be run by Digia, with existing and new commercial customers, who will benefit from the continuity of development of desktop and embedded Qt functionality and new service models. To further strengthen its global presence, Digia will establish subsidiaries in USA and Norway as part of the transaction.

Qt is said to be actively used by around 3500 desktop and embedded customer companies which will be transferred to Digia upon closing. The commercial customers represent industries like consumer electronics, finance, aviation, energy, defence and media.

"Qt continues to be an important technology for Nokia and it is critical that Qt's growth and success can continue. While Nokia will continue to invest in developing Qt as a cross-platform framework for mobile, desktop and embedded segments, focusing on open source development and expansion, we wanted a partner who can drive the commercial licencing and services business around Qt. Digia has proven, in-depth Qt expertise, operational excellence and a keen interest in growing and improving the overall Qt community and so well positioned to expand the Qt commercial licencing and services business," says Sebastian Nyström, vice president, head of MeeGo, Qt and Webkit at Nokia.

"We look forward to driving further the evolution of Qt by bringing in new features and services," says Harri Paani, senior vice president from Digia.

In addition to acquiring the business responsibility over Qt commercial licencing and services, Digia also plans to employ 19 persons from Nokia's technical consulting services team and global Qt commercial sales and marketing teams. That is targeted to ensuring that the customers will continue to deal with the people they already know.

Digia will invest in the development of Qt as a commercial framework. In particular, the plan is to emphasise Qt in the desktop and embedded environments and to examine new support models and functionality requests. Digia will provide commercial customers with improvements in support and functionality for older platforms that were not on the Nokia development roadmap. The holders of a Qt commercial licence will be informed about the details separately.