Nokia announces official Qt port to Maemo 5 — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Tech preview available} Nokia announces official Qt port to Maemo 5

Sebastian Nyström

9 Oct 2009 at 09:26 GMT Timo Poropudas

Nokia today announced the creation of the official Qt port to Maemo 5 and published an initial Technology Preview release. This port to Maemo 5 means that developers can now use Qt to target the upcoming Nokia N900 device and also ensures that applications can be easily ported to all Qt's supported platforms including the next Maemo 6 release as well as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

The Qt port to Maemo 5 is designed specifically to work within the Maemo 5 environment, which will power the upcoming Nokia N900 device. The port itself will be based on Qt's upcoming version 4.6 and is scheduled for final release in Q1 of 2010.

Nokia believes that with this announcement and its upcoming port of Qt to the Symbian platform, Qt will be quickly established as a leading framework for mobile application development.

“Developers will be able to use Qt as a framework to create powerful native applications and with Qt's Webkit integration, it also provides them with a platform for creating web applications and services," said Sebastian Nyström, VP of Application Services and Frameworks at Nokia.

"Qt's support for Maemo 5, Maemo 6, Symbian, as well as Windows Mobile makes Qt the most sensible choice for developers looking to target multiple devices and achieve the broadest reach with their innovations."

This port of Qt will incorporate the community-driven 'Qt for Maemo' project that provided a strong foundation for building the official port, and because of the open nature of the project, Nokia was able to base the official port on this code. “The change from a community port to an official port was necessary to ensure that applications developed with Qt will be compatible with both future versions of Qt, future versions of Maemo, as well as Symbian and the other platforms Qt supports, Nokia says in its press release.

The Qt port to Maemo 5 technology preview is available at Nokia’s Maemo pages.