Nokia acquires Trolltech -- the biggest little company you've never heard of

In a move meant to bolster its software development prowess, Nokia just announced the acquisition Trolltech. Who's Trolltech? Well, its software can be found in some 10 million devices. In fact, Trolltech's Qt is used by such familiar applications as Skype, Google Earth, and Photoshop Elements while their Qtopia was spotted on a hacked Archos 5 series earlier this month. By acquiring Trolltech's software development frameworks and application platforms, Nokia hopes to help developers create Internet applications that work on PCs and across Nokia devices. Specifically, Nokia claims that the move will "further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40." The deal also grandfathers Nokia into the LiMo Foundation and its attempt to bring open-source to your handset. Hear that Android? The $153 million offer must still be processed through regulatory channels and approved by shareholders -- all expected before June in out.

[Zeus.:God @ Jan 28th 2008 4:11AM]

DON'T FEED THE TROLL! Wait... I think I'm missing something here...

[Rynth @ Jan 28th 2008 5:08AM]

I think you mean:

"Don't feed the troll technicians"

Though I'm not quite sure what that is.

[tamoghno @ Jan 28th 2008 4:13AM]

will it be able to cure S40's menu navigational clutter ?

[Samo @ Jan 28th 2008 4:27AM]

.... I it me, or is that a really bad name for a patent trol... erm, Tech company?

I'm sure the majority of E readers thought the same thing when they saw the name, right?

[Reid @ Jan 28th 2008 12:04PM]

No, the majority of us already knew Trolltech.

[Richard @ Jan 28th 2008 4:31AM]

QT = KDE, GTK = Gnome (N810/800/700) who sees a conflict here ?

[john @ Jan 28th 2008 8:54AM]

Maybe Maemo will be switching from GTK to KDE?

[theflew @ Jan 28th 2008 12:10PM]

Maemo doesn't have to switch. It could work just like the Linux desktop does and allows both types of applications. It's actually very good for the N8XX since there are a lot of great Qt/KDE applications that could be run on the N8XX's.

[Justin @ Jan 28th 2008 2:20PM]

Fundamentally, S60 (nee Series 60) is just a UI. It doesn't matter if the OS behind it is Symbian or Linux. Nokia's ability to swap our Symbian in favor of Linux is a trump card it's had up its sleeve for quite a while now. The Nokia 770, N800 and N810 are really research projects that invite public participation while Nokia fleshes out the plumbing of Maemo. At some point in the not too distant future, you can expect an N-Series device to boot up and look just like S60 3.x - perhaps even be called S60 4.x - but there won't be Symbian inside.

Nokia's insistence on owning their own UI throughout their participation in Symbian development was a smart move.

[Curtis McHenry @ Jan 28th 2008 4:37AM]

How many friggin times do we have to say it... "Stop mass-manufacturing trolls, they are to the internet what function over form is to Apple" -.-'

[LordFarkward @ Jan 28th 2008 4:57AM]

that makes you sound like an anti-apple troll

[gt2378b @ Jan 28th 2008 9:32AM]

Stop mass-manufacturing trolls, they are to the internet what function over form is to Apple" -.-'

What does that even mean?

[Rollins @ Jan 28th 2008 4:38AM]

They made the Sharp Zaurus line's OS, if I recall correctly.

Interesting acquisition.

[Smiley @ Jan 28th 2008 5:41AM]

They don't make the OS per se, they provide an API on top of the Linux kernel. But yes their software is used, amongst others, in the Sharp Zaurus line, the Openmoko Linux phone, as well as Motorola EZX Linux-phones series (if not their entire Linux phones line).
I guess Motorola must be really, really happy right now.

[devurandom @ Jan 28th 2008 7:37AM]

they didn't make the openmoko (it's a gtk platform anyway)
they did make the greenphone

[Electromodo @ Jan 28th 2008 9:59AM]

Qtopia i s crap. I have it on Sharp Zaurus and Skype phone and I hate it. Buggy, hangs all the time, missing functionality.

These are the reasons my Sharp Zaurus, that has a descent hardware, collects the dust on the shelf.

BTW, Greenphone was a loose too.

So I hope Nokia will put things in place.

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 4:49AM]

This is in response to the fact that Nokia, despite being at 40% market share is in trouble. As I just blogged The handset market is shifting almost entirely to a software market and symbian just doesnt cut it. I think, despite Nokia's seeming success, without radical action, Android, OS X, and even windows mobile will hurt them.

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 4:51AM]

I forgot, The URL to the article where I discuss the shift I discuss above is here:

http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/01/end-of-feature-phone-market-shifting.html

[Rich @ Jan 28th 2008 6:32AM]

Umm, Hank, aren't you forgetting that Nokia owns an even larger slice of the smartphone market than it does of the overall cell phone market? Symbian runs on 70% of the world's smartphones and many carriers are specifying it as a preferred platform.

Sure, S60 has its problems but so do all platforms. Apple's platform is likely to be semi-closed, Android development is currently a joke and Windows Mobile has failed to gain more than single digit smartphone market share since its début in 2002.

Nokia have been investing in software for a long time. Just look at the massive firmware updates for the N95 as proof of their commitment.

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 6:53AM]

Rich,

Statistics are interesting things. Nokia's so called leadership in smart phones is, in large part, dependent on categorization. Many of the phones categorized as smart really arent so smart. But really that is a secondary issue. The primary issue is they are not usable. The best proof of this is that in 6 months the iPhone has become the leading mobile browser. This is based on only 4million units sold. It has several percentage points of browsing marketshare. Nokia doesnt even make the chart. This is incredible. But really not so incredible if you've ever tried to use any of these other devices.

On a technical level, Symbian is very difficult to program. The developer model is horrible. Android is, in that regard incredibly easy to program and my view is that you are going to see incredibly innovative applications on Android because you can develop applications much more rapidly, and things like built in mapping being accessible with a simple api are game changing.

But the bottom line is Nokia themselves have spoken by taking this step. It is obvious even to them, what kind of steps need to be taken.

[Pdexter @ Jan 28th 2008 7:47AM]

"The primary issue is they are not usable. The best proof of this is that in 6 months the iPhone has become the leading mobile browser."
You are talking about North America where Nokia has 4-5% market share....
I dont see any problems thought if there is problem it is no doubt OS that they need to work.
S60 3th edition sf2 seems really good and brings much needed eye candy and almost next to that will be released the first s60 touch(s60 5th edition and will support all apps of s60 3th edition)) that btw will be used in non touch devices too and by then i dont see any problems of Nokia holding it's control in smartphones.

OS X is amazing, but Apple aint going to make real portfolio of phones(at least 3-6 phones in a year)and so it wont be a threat for big players globally you need to remember that iphone made the impact in USA and Nokia dosent have anything exept one N series device that has American 3G and it's not selling in any carrier so OS X is eating Windows.

Android is totally a different story this will be a big player in future and who knows if Nokia jumps in, but it wont be easy as Nokia owns 49% of Symbian.

Symbian will stay number one in the future, but Android will eat some if it's market share and Windows keeps sucking. Smartphone market will be bigger by then too so i'm sure they(Android and Symbian) will do good.

You can go and say these things in European forum and you will see how stongly they feel about Symbian. Try example Mobile-Review. Symbian has(Nokia)enough of brand power to keep it number one for some time even if they produced shit that s60 almost is now, but the current s60 is also living it's last days new os that i talked above might be present already in the next and N and E series phones that are coming in 3GSM.

[Rich @ Jan 28th 2008 8:21AM]

@Hank"Statistics are interesting things. Nokia's so called leadership in smart phones is, in large part, dependent on categorization. Many of the phones categorized as smart really arent so smart."

Explain. Can all S60 phones run native 3rd party applications? Yes. Can they do push e-mail? Yes. Do they provide advanced PIM functionality (sometimes through 3rd party applications)? Yes. Do they feature an advanced web-browser? Yes.

What's the difference between a Nokia 6120 classic and a HP iPAQ 514 running Windows Mobile SMARTPHONE edition?

"On a technical level, Symbian is very difficult to program. The developer model is horrible."

Symbian C++ is a bitch and will always provide a steep learning curve for bedroom coders. However, there's plenty of other alternatives on S60 such as POSIX C, Java, Python and OPL. Not to mention that the majority of iPhone web apps work with the Nokia web-browser. Personally, I managed to learn Python and knock out an application in an afternoon.

"Android is, in that regard incredibly easy to program and my view is that you are going to see incredibly innovative applications on Android because you can develop applications much more rapidly, and things like built in mapping being accessible with a simple api are game changing."

Have you actually tried writing an application for Android? The documentation is woeful and there's huge gaps in the APIs. There's a chance it might get better with time, but I've yet to see any evidence.

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 8:55AM]

@Rich

I am not saying that S60 isnt a smart phone, but that lots of other of their phones run symbian that I wouldnt consider smart phones and so some people like to use that number relating to Nokia and smart phones.

Regaring android, yes I have tried programming one. Got something simple up and running in a day. I was even able to do mapping. But I will agree the doc is crap. Better the doc be crap than the development model. They can more easily write more doc than fix the design.

@L

yes, my views are US centric.

Regarding the statistics, I am *not* trying to say that the iphone is bigger than the s60. My only point about the browsing numbers is people are obviously browsing with the iphone more than with any other phone, even though there are only *at most* 5m out there. My point is that clearly people *like* the iphone more (at least regarding browsing) than they do their s60's.

@pdexter

I do not believe that apple is going to become the global leader in cellphones. What I believe is that 40% marketshare is impossible to maintain when you have comparatively crappy software in a highly competitive worldwide market. Between apple, RIM, Android, and Microsoft all competing to make a great mobile OS, once hardware gets cheap enough to run anything, Nokia will have to compete head to head on software, and nothing near 40% is sustainable.

[Pdexter @ Jan 28th 2008 9:27AM]

Well when your talking about s40 phones Nokia has absolutely now worries with that i think it's brilliant and i dont consider it crappy.
S60 is starting to look a bit older and that's why Nokia has introduced rather long time ago s60 3th edition FP2 that is suppose to make it more user friendly and deliver this eye candy factor. That is marketing talk i dont think it does much to s60 structure thought it does bring eye candy, but it's more like an quick fix.

S60 5th edition in other hand is really making some major changes in the OS and i have really high hopes for it.
Still wanna just say that remember that s60 3th edition is living it last days and N82 might have been last 3th edition phone(hopefully).

Nokia can keep 40% easily with the current situation your talking about 40% market share, but smartphones are a fraction of that 40% even if Nokia controls smartphone markets globally.
From the 4 big cell phone companies Nokia's s40(non smartphone platform) is hardly the crapiest imo the best of them exept maybe SE's uiq (running on Symbian platform), but just now their hardware aint really doing it, but i'm sure they start to deliver this year.

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 9:34AM]

@pdexter

Its hard to address what you say, because it seems like you havent read the blog posting which really explains all of this.

In short, my argument is that in the not so far off future, all phones will be capable of running a decent powerful OS. When this happens, everything will be about software and the hardware will be generic (like PCs). And right now Nokia doesnt have great software compared to the new kids on the block. When there is lots of high quality competition on a more powerful nothing near 40% will be maintainable.

[Rich @ Jan 28th 2008 9:52AM]

@Hank
"I am not saying that S60 isnt a smart phone, but that lots of other of their phones run symbian that I wouldnt consider smart phones and so some people like to use that number relating to Nokia and smart phones."

I don't understand. You consider all S60 phones to be smartphones but not all Nokia Symbian phones to be smartphones? Nokia has three platforms - S30, S40 and S60. Only phones running S60 use Symbian. S30 and S40 are based on Nokia's own proprietary OS.

Could you give us an example of a Symbian phone you consider not to be smart?

[Hank Williams @ Jan 28th 2008 10:05AM]

@Rich

"I don't understand. You consider all S60 phones to be smartphones but not all Nokia Symbian phones to be smartphones? Nokia has three platforms - S30, S40 and S60."

Not true.

"Only phones running S60 use Symbian. S30 and S40 are based on Nokia's own proprietary OS."

Not True.

"Could you give us an example of a Symbian phone you consider not to be smart?"

Sure. Nokia N75. At least thats what they call it at AT&T. Runs Symbian. Feels like a regular old feature phone.

[Tissot @ Jan 28th 2008 10:36AM]

So your only experience of s60 is one of the crapiest N and E series phone that has "lovely"att branding and didnt ever even enter in any other market than usa....

About that a bit confusing comment above are you trying to say that Nokia is saying that s40 phones are smartphones? S40 like above said isnt even part of symbian. Really travel to Asia or Europe and those numbers arent wierd at all.

[Zip @ Jan 28th 2008 10:43AM]

So because phone is missing qwerty it cant be smartphone? This is agen one of the different attitudes compared to USA and Asia/Europe. N73 is a smartphone and E90 is a business phone.

[Rich @ Jan 28th 2008 10:54AM]

@Hank
You might want to check your facts. Everything I've said is true. S30/S40 don't use Symbian. S60 does use Symbian. S80/S90 used to use Symbian but have now been rolled into S60. Check http://www.symbian.com/phones if you don't believe me.

The N75 runs S60. It *feels* like a feature phone but it can do anything that a phone running Windows Mobile Smartphone edition can do. That includes running Quake and Blackberry Connect. :)

[gui ambros @ Jan 29th 2008 1:39AM]

@ Hank
apple doesn't have scale. And doesn't want to. They are a niche player and I'm sure they'll continue one. They prefer to have 8% of market share (and be able to innovate) than fighting for the billions of users in India, China, Russia, Brazil, and worrying with the legacy of hundreds of different models, configurations, customizations for dozens of operators, etc.

this is a very different strategy than nokia, that plays with scale, global geographies and humongous portfolio.

yeah, iphone is a great product isn't it? And probably the 3G version will be even better. Soon after we'll see smaller models, then different colors, engraved names on the back, etc, etc. Classic product extension theory. But we all saw the story, don't we?

Just that this time, differently than the ipod, they're arriving to a party with 2.5 billion users worldwide, and even with the "success" of 4MM iphones in US they account for less than 0.16% of global market share. And even if they do a great job of growing by a whopping ten times - and I'm sure they will - apple will barely have 1.6%...

yeah, we can have all the talk about how many of these 2.5 bi are really smartphones and so, but this is really irrelevant. Eventually phones will be just small personal computers with different processing power, all connected 24/7 and the real question will be scale, software and services.

And by incorporating Qt into Symbian, Nokia is doing yet another important step on software front. Kudos to them.

[x20mar @ Jan 28th 2008 6:05AM]

With all these SDK coming out for all these different phones, it's like social networking apps but for your phone. The question is now who going to come around with a SDK for all phones?

[L @ Jan 28th 2008 7:52AM]

"The best proof of this is that in 6 months the iPhone has become the leading mobile browser. This is based on only 4million units sold. It has several percentage points of browsing marketshare. Nokia doesnt even make the chart. This is incredible. But really not so incredible if you've ever tried to use any of these other devices."

"Statistics are interesting things."

There, you said it yourself...so, you disregard 70% market share, but call a study "proof" for the impeding doom of Nokia? VERY flimsy evidence if you ask me...

Basically, what you're taking is an US-centric view on that whole thing. Saying that "[Nokia phones] aren't usable" is quite a ridiculous statement...

Symbian developement is awkward (I'll give you that, the ONLY valid point in that post), but then again, you've never heard of OpenC or PIPS, I guess? Things will get better very soon in that aspect...

[L @ Jan 28th 2008 8:41AM]

Oh...this should have been a reply to Hank Williams post...

[Jonathon @ Jan 28th 2008 11:10AM]

Don't know how this comes into play, but I have a N95 and use Opera Mini almost exclusively. The built in S60 browser is somewhere between decent and good. But Opera Mini is nearing absolutely awesome.

[CanCar @ Jan 28th 2008 8:47AM]

It would not be a surprise when they get to be one of the strongest and solid companies (in the cellphones´s world). Sometimes these small companies are giants that have not been discovered.

[Øyvind Nordhagen @ Jan 28th 2008 8:55AM]

I think i heard something about Trolltech's CEO participating in this year's Grand Prix melody festival in Europe. Apparently he's through to the Norwegian finale. Here's a picture:

http://www.nrk.no/programmer/tv/melodi_grand_prix/1.4413146

[Michael L. @ Jan 28th 2008 2:37PM]

Gotta love us crazy Norwegian vikings.

[EMoShunz @ Jan 28th 2008 9:17AM]

trolltech made an oss sdk and hardware phone that recently got dropped. the greenphone i think it was called. this could be good or bad given nokia's recent labour issues. wonder if nokia will become the next 'patron of kde'.

[john @ Jan 28th 2008 10:34AM]

Not sure if I do or don't like the idea of Nokia going with KDE. It would certainly bring some more things into the Nokia family, but it would mean a big change in the Maemo/Hildon GUI (Nokia's existing Linux effort, for their N810/N800/770 platform).

Might be good for them to switch to KDE... but it might just be wheel spinning (lots of effort but no real meaningful improvement ... while having completely disrupted what they had before).

[gork @ Jan 28th 2008 9:24AM]

This means good things for Open Moko.

[EMoShunz @ Jan 28th 2008 9:33AM]

i think open moko supports gtk by default...of course being oss, kde should work too! be interesting to see if nokia buys the company that makes the neo1978 next.

[john @ Jan 28th 2008 10:31AM]

Not sure why Nokia would buy OpenMoko. I don't think there'd be any point in it.

1) Nokia already knows how to make phones

2) Nokia already has its own handheld linux platform (Maemo)

They can probably marry 1 and 2 more easily than doing it by acquiring a third company. And, thus, I'm not sure why this would imply anything good for the OpenMoko company, either.

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[Pdexter @ Mar 31st 2008 6:27AM]

Hmmm Sorry i dont get this part
"Nokia's so called leadership in smart phones is, in large part, dependent on categorization. Many of the phones categorized as smart really arent so smart. But really that is a secondary issue."
?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
Someone could argue that OS X aint smartphone platform as it dosent have real multitasking, but it would hardly make a different globally.
They havetaken account of the big players and these are the numbers you get.