Digia bought Qt licensing business from Nokia
digia.com
digia.com
I think the way to figure out which way Nokia is going to go can be seen on how they treat Qt. If they choose to keep it, Meego is going to be the future. If they choose to let it wither and die (or sell it off), Meego will become just a curiosity. Qt is the key for Meego developer adoption, and the only way it could become a feasible smartphone platform. In my opinion there's no point to develop Meego just for the tablet market; it would be really hard when you couldn't leverage the same development effort as on the phone side.
What Nokia does with Qt merely indicates the method and alacrity by which it will die in their hands, not Nokia's seriousness about it as a future platform (they're just stuck with it for a while on Symbian).
This sale is an attempt to extract value from the desktop part of the framework. The alternative was to be left with a worthless asset after a few years of withering on the vine.
If I was a commercial Qt developer I would consider the desktop portion of the framework in permanent maintenance (fee) mode. Yes they said development would continue but that is what is always said in this type of situation. There is I suppose a chance that this company means it but that would not be the typical situation.
If Nokia has mandated an end to Qt Desktop development and we can reasonably expect an end to Qt Mobile development given Nokia's priorities, well then we can expect an end. (that's a period after end)
If Nokia had actually sold all of Qt to an actual software house, it would have been good. This looks much more like a "fragment to destroy" strategy instead.
That might have been Henrik Hartz. I think he meant that there's nothing revolutionary happening right now on the desktop so they only have to keep up with new OS versions.
Through the proposed acquisition, around 3500 desktop and embedded customer companies from various industries are targeted to be transferred to Digia.
and
Nokia will continue to invest in future development of Qt for the benefit of all users, both Commercial and LGPL.
Why do they sell it in the first place? If Nokia will continue to invest in future development, it will be a direct benefit of Digia not really Nokia...
Because the licensing/support business is way outside of their area of expertise, and they were almost guaranteed to screw it up.
Why would they continue to invest?
For the same reason anybody invests in open source. Even with the big Windows shift, QT is still a part of their success moving forward. Without investing in QT, that part of their success would be controlled by a third party (or even worse, nobody).
Do I necessarily buy the above 2 statements? Not necessarily. Actions speak louder than words, but this action might not say much. How many QT developers they lay off is the action that means something. Currently, they're still hiring, so...
They bought the Consulting side basically - where it was possible to buy commercial licenses (didn't buy the core developers). Qt's moving towards open governance and Nokia (as stated) has developers contributing to Qt.
This makes sense, really, to avoid commercial Qt users from despairing about Nokia's plans.
On the other hand, Digia has been doing a lot of Qt work for Nokia, so it's good news for their developers.
Trolltech's total revenue is around €25 million. Total losses were around €6 million for the last couple of years. Total cash on hand at this point is around €13 million. They've got around 250 employees worldwide.
No info, though, on how this was split between licensing and other professional services.
Employing hundreds of Qt experts, Digia has 7 years experience in providing top-class Qt competence, and is dedicated to continue and grow Qt Commercial relationships as well as to contribute innovation to the overall Qt LGPL and commercial community.
Edit: actually, it's on the Qt press release itself. They state there [2] that: > The Qt Commercial licensing business is growing and has around 3500 companies
[1] http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/16/nokia-cto-rich-green-spe...
[2] http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/03/07/nokia-and-digia-working-...
"For regular desktop applications, there are no royalties, runtime licenses, or other additional costs. For fixed systems or devices where the main functionality relies on Qt, a runtime distribution license may apply."
We will have to see how good a home Digia will be for Qt. They did come out with a profit warning just a couple of days ago, due to problems in the Mobile Solutions segment.