Digia said today it has agreed to acquire the Qt business, software, and staff from Nokia, only weeks after the phone maker posted a massive second-quarter operating loss.
Digia said in a statement it planned to take Qt and “quickly enable” it for Android, iOS, and Window 8 devices.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Reuters reports that analysts pegged the figure at a “fraction” of the $150 million Nokia paid for the software in 2008.
It comes more than a year since Nokia sold off its Qt Commercial business to Digia. Digia’s plans means “it can continue as a successful open source project,” said Nokia strategy chief Sebastian Nyström.
Qt is a framework used by close to a half-million developers used for making cross-platform applications for more than dozens of industries — from aerospace to medical devices industry. It enables developers to write applications for both Symbian and MeeGo.
But since Nokia’s bid to move away from MeeGo last year in favor of Microsoft-provided Windows Phone 7 and later versions, Qt became widely redundant.
Qt was acquired by Nokia in 2008 from its original developers, Trolltech. Last week, more than 50 employees at Nokia’s Brisbane, Australia office were given pink slips because the Finnish firm planned to close the office.
But Nokia said it will move up to 125 Qt staff from Norway and Germany to Digia
For Nokia, this will be seen as another cost-cutting exercise in a bid to preserve the cash it’s already burning through at a rapid rate. The Finland-based phone maker this year alone cut 10,000 jobs and brought in the bankers to mull a buy-off of its luxury line of phone, Vertu.
Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/digia-acquires-qt-from-nokia-eyes-android-ios-windows-8-7000002378/
