Nokia could be selling it’s Qt assets

Posted by in News on Aug 1, 2012 | 4 comments

 

These rumors of Nokia selling Qt might not be huge surprise after Nokia left MeeGo and even scrapping their Meltemi project.
This rumor isn’t pulled out of thin air as Nokia just this week informed it’s closing Brisbane Australia office. Development site that has been working on Qt components.

Hi all,

We have received word that the Brisbane Australia office, consisting of the teams working on Qt3D, QtDeclarative, QtMultimedia, QtSensors, and QtSystems modules, as well as the CI/QA team for Qt, will be shut down. Our last day is August 31.

The individual developers still retain their status within the Qt Project. Whether they choose to remain working on Qt is up to them. Personally, I will continue is possible because I still have plans/research I want to do.

Except for the CI hardware. which still has employment in the EU.

so… anyone hiring? – Lorn Potter, Nokia

After that there is more fuel put to the fire by these comments.

I wasn’t going to mention this but since the topic has come up…

A source I consider reliable has whispered in my ear that
in the aftermath of Nokia recently shooting Meltemi dead*,
Sebastian Nyström (the Nokia Senior VP in charge of Qt) has
been given explicit direction to sell-off the Qt asset.

Nokia’s great experiment in frameworks (mobile and otherwise)
is over. – Atlant Schmidt

Nokia acquired Trolltech back in January for $153 million that worked as first major launch platform for Nokia’s Qt ventures. Nokia after that started multiple offices and development sites around world that some have already been stopped. Like the recent Ulm, Germany facility being killed this year.

All that said this is not a press release or anything of that sort. All rumors so far.

 

Would it be beneficial for Nokia to hold on Qt development even after not having OS that takes use of it?

 

 

Thanks for the tip Heikki

  • jalyst

    and this is surprising how?

  • jalyst

    Also see the recent talk qgil (Quim Gil?) gave at Nokia/Qt/KDE meet-up, he tweeted a link to the video.

  • jiipee

    Sebastian Nyström is maybe a good person to sell it out. What I heard was that he was not really succesfull in reaping benefits of Qt. Under his watch eg. Qt was split to Symbian and Maemo/Meego threads.

    • jalyst

      Well of course he wasn’t “successful”, look at the main thrust of their strategy in the last 18mth, Qt has “mainly” taken a back seat the whole time.
      Aside from internal works that never really saw the light of day, there was little externally that gave the wider community confidence/momentum :-/