Nokia to acquire Trolltech

[GreyGeek]

I just got an email from Trolltech, sent to all their commercial licensees.

"Dear customer,

Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech.

Trolltech's management and board of directors support Nokia's offer.
We felt it was important to directly inform you about this.

We are very excited about this, please read the attachment.


Trolltech ASA"

[wysota]

Interesting. I hope the focus on the desktop platforms will not be reduced if that aquirement becomes reality.

[ashukla]

Interesting. I hope the focus on the desktop platforms will not be reduced if that aquirement becomes reality.

I think It is a great deal.

[ball]

I think it is a big trouble. Nokia focus on mobile and has her own platform. Buying Trolltech just means they want to kill this ememy on mobile market. It would be very dangerous to all of us which spend time learning and using Qt's products.

[wysota]

I'm sure Eirik and Haavard wouldn't sell their shares if they thought that would endanger Qt. Let us not be so hasty in throwing opinions.

If many people have doubts about it, there is always an option of writing an open letter to Nokia asking for declarations of their intents.

[WinchellChung]

Well, there is the KDE Free Qt Foundation which says it will try to look after open source interests in Qt
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

[THRESHE]

I think that this deal may impact badly Trolltech's Qt though I suppose that Qtopia will be developed actively.
My attitude to this deal is BAD

[wysota]

Most Qtopia features are adopted from Qt and throwing away the whole platform that boosts the development and has millions of free testers would be silly.

[Peterwinston]

Nokia will be good all around, for Qt, Qtopia, commercial and open source.

It’s obvious that Nokia wants Qtoipia for their handsets, but it’s just an important to realize that they will want Qt. Phones and desktops are converging; it’s getting more and more important to get your vmail on your desktop. Or, to have productivity applications that communicate between your desktop and your mobile. Qt and Qtpoia gives Nokia a platform to build a new generation of applications to compete with the iPhone.

Open Source is a slightly harder argument to make, but the way that I see it, Nokia/Qtopia will be competing with Google/Android and with MS/windowsCE. The Open source version and community gives them credibility and a slue of applications that they need. Supporting the OS community is cheap (for Nokia) it makes good sense.

I think that this is a great move for Trolltech and an opportunity for the rest of us to get on board a winner early.

Peter Winston
ICS

[QPlace]

What you said is all true. Probably.

Business model of Nokia is different from the one of QT, isn't it? In order to survive Trolltech had to be truly multiplatform solution. As soon as even one platform is dropped, even the one that has, say, 2% of the desktop market, QT is dead as a platform of choice for commercial, closed-source code companies that want to go to extra length in order to have true C++-based multi-platform solution for their market. I, as a customer, want to invest my time and money into the solution which I can be reasonably sure survives test of time for being multi-platform. And this investment is not cheap by any means (I am not talking about licensing costs).

There is absolutely no guarantee that Nokia's business model will not result into clever marketing moves to harm competition to their core business. I can easily invent couple right now, they can be rebuffed or discussed, but this is besides the point I am trying to make.

Previously, before the announcement, my believe in the QT-based investment I made relied largely on my understanding of what Trolltech business model is, specifically how they make money. Now I am not so sure if my decision is right in a long-term. And being "not so sure" makes me review my decisions. And it is truly sad.

[Walter]

I'm still undecided if I should invest so much money and time in learning Qt after his move....
Is there anything noticeable about the future plans of Nokia (despite the FAQ on the Trolltech site)?

[wysota]

From what I know and understand Nokia doesn't want to influence the direction of Qt development in any way. Everybody in Trolltech that says anything about the aquirement is very positive about it. Remember that's it's not that we'll be having "Qt by Nokia" instead of "Qt by Trolltech" notice in our applications, nothing will change in that regard.

[HostV]

This aquisition must not affect any products and customers. As Trolltech is rather profitable enterprice with such clients as Adobe, NASA, Motorola and Google I think NOKIA would not like to lose such tasty piece of cake.

[jpn]

As Trolltech is rather profitable enterprice with such clients as Adobe, NASA, Motorola and Google I think NOKIA would not like to lose such tasty piece of cake.

I totally agree that these are nice and valuable clients, but from what I've read and heard, Trolltech hasn't actually been profitable for the recent years.

[Brandybuck]

They had a dry spell for a while (mostly due to fumbling the qt4 vs qt4 and qt vs qtopia issue), but they have been picking up steam recently.