Thomas,

Always a pleasure to see your logic at work. Time will tell how this will unwind, so I just offer some additional thoughts/guesses;
- Android was a factor in here but IMHO this has been part of Nokia’s direction longer than rumours of what G may or may not do
- As Nokia moves up the value and sees handset profits reducing they need a critical mass of devices as foundation for services revenue
- This means reducing dependency to any one platform and building an abstraction layer that allows running same code on multiple form factors
- Yes this means s40 and s60 but also other embedded devices riding that oncoming wave called convergence…

Overall sounds like a day in a sun for Trolltech and yet another decisive move by Nokia to reinvent themselves again, and this time not away from rubber boots

I think it’s a very strategic move by Nokia. Here is some background info on Trolletch:
- Motorola’s most successful Linux touch-screen smartphone Ming is based on Trolltech’s QTopia
- Sony Mylo also runs QTopia
- Trolltech is a member of LiMo Foundation, which develops mobile Linux and which is led by NTT DoCoMo.

So, first of all, I was going to say that Nokia could use Trolletech’s expertise to further enhance its N8xx Internet Tablet. However, I didn’t know that Maemo and QTopia were so opposite to each other as you mentioned. In this case Maemo could’ve been cut off. but it’s a little bit drastic move.
Second, they could try to emulate Motorola’s success with Ming in China, by introducing QTopia-based Nokia smartphone Ning for instance.
Third, if they do continue the development of Trolltech’s products and support of new and existing customers, as they stated in the press release, then they could become involved in LiMo’s activities, be-friend with DoCoMo and maybe cook some Linux phone for Japan as well. Also, if Google’s OHA/Android and LiMo decide to collaborate in future, Nokia will be there keeping fingers on the pulse…
Just my 2 cents.

Timo: Great to ear from you. Could you send me your new email? Yes I agree they are building a common foundation for all their devices…to get ride as mush as possible from low level hardware dependencies and allow easy services deployment…but also ease their own internal development (we know S40…). I’m not sure if this Qt plan comes from a long time …else they would have choosen Qt over GTK for Maemo.

Yaromir: Thanks for the comment! Just a point : Limo is based on GTK also…so in this regard I have to admit I don’t know why Trolltech is part of Limo (Anyway Trolltech has an history of “being present” in many OpenSoure/Linux initiatives, even if not relevant). I fully agree with you about the DoCoMo synergy: it exists already today around S60 (in the world only Nokia and DoCoMo are really selling in volume S60 devices) and may extends with this new common platform Nokia will propose.

I think the key point to take away from the Trolltech purchase is that this will reduce development redundancy. Right now everything the S60 guys are doing the S40 people have to copy and write for that platform.

Thanks to the Trolltech purchase I wouldn’t be surprised to see a runtime developed that would make write once run everywhere possible across S40 and S60.

Exactly, As I’ve mentionned in the article, I think this is the key aspect for Nokia.