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Nokia’s software springboard in place
By Mike on 18 June 2008
ESPOO, Finland – Way back in January news emerged of Nokia’s plan to buy Trolltech. In mainstream terms it’s a little known organization, but despite the lack of glitz this is a smart outfit equipped with world class cross-platform development software and tools. So today’s news that the acquisition has been unconditionally approved by the European Commission marks an important milestone on Nokia’s journey towards enabling everyone to access the software and services they want on multiple platforms and devices, a vision championed in the recent evolution of Ovi.
This concept of having software and services accessible from an ultra diverse range of devices is something that stretches beyond bringing Trolltech into the Nokia fold. Ari Jaaksi, Nokia’s head of software, echoed this idea in his keynote talk last week at the Handsets World event, alluding to “a world where everyone can be connected”.
Similarly, this vision extends into the activities of the new Nokia Research Centre in Lausanne in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, where the teams are exploring the idea of an “Internet of Things”, where devices and software can harvest physical information from the real world and enable us to share beyond the boundaries of existing technologies.
It’s clear that flexibility is one of the key threads of next-gen software development moving forward, and with the likes of Trolltech onboard broadening horizons and the reality of widespread and rapidly deployed cross-platform software becomes tangible and exciting.
What do you think? Is cross-platform software an essential strand in the evolution of mobile software and services?
Photo from Joe Shlabotnik
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Tags | Ari Jaaksi, conversations, cross-platform, European Commission, Internet of things, Lausanne, Nokia, NRC, research, Trolltech
June 18th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
i really think cross platforum sofware is essential, especially with how complex these phones are becoming. but we all know this can go bad and certain programs or softwares can easily become useless. I really think its great how Ovi has support forums where people can make suggestions. I think it’s extremely crucial to listen to the people that post there, they may be representing the masses that are too scared or lazy to post their thoughts about what Ovi can and should do.
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June 19th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
When I look at the software I use most often for work and play these days I find that it’s the cross-platform applications that I keep coming back to – Skype, the last.fm player (both of these use Trolltech’s Qt by the way), Eclipse, Firefox, Thunderbird, Emacs, OpenOffice …
I use all of these regularly on computers running Windows XP, Linux, and MacOS (I don’t use Thunderbird on the Mac), and for the most part the functionality is essentially the same on each platform. I’ve been looking forward to the day that I could do the same with applications from Nokia. I’m hopeful that the Trolltech acquisition will make this a reality.
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