Nokia cell phone giant acquires Trolltech

January 28, 2008
Here is news which will be interesting for all Linux users. Nokia the cellular giant headquartered at Finland has acquired Trolltech the Norwegian company which is developing the Qt library. The deal is believed to be worth around US $153 million. While many of us relate to Trolltech via the ever popular Desktop environment KDE which is built using the Qt library, a lesser known fact is that Trolltech's product is also used by other popular software such as Skype, Google Earth and Adobe's Photoshop Elements just to name a few.

What does that mean for us Linux enthusiasts ? Well, in the future we can look forward to better cell phones and devices from Nokia with a slick user interface powered by the Qt library. Nokia is a big supporter of Open Source. For example, it has released the N770 and N800 Internet tablet in the past which is powered by Linux. Trolltech has also released an open cell phone dubbed the Greenphone.

So in all respects, this acquisition bodes well for the Open source and Free software community at large.

You can read the Official press release at the Trolltech website as well as a joint statement (PDF) by Nokia and Trolltech CEOs to the KDE and Open source community.

1 comments:

  • Thats good news ! Open source is soon picking up !