Digia announces enhanced BB10 support for Qt

Digia, the company that acquired Qt from Nokia has announced enhanced support the Blackberry's new Blackberry 10 operating system.

Qt is a framework that works across many platforms (both desktop and mobile) and allows developers to use the same front-end code which will work across all the supported platforms and Qt is used in Blackberry's Cascade framework which is used to develop native Blackberry applications.

Digia maintains the commercial version of Qt and also the open source version that is available from the Qt Project which is where any Blackberry enhancements are upstreamed to.

Digia releases Qt 5.0

Digia the company that has taken over the development of Qt (from Nokia) has released version 5.0 of the toolkit. This maintains compatibility with Qt 4.

Qt 5 benefits include:

• graphics quality
• performance on constrained hardware
• cross-platform portability
• support for C++11
• HTML5 support with QtWebKit 2
• a vastly improved QML engine with new APIs

Qt 5 also supports OpenGL ES (the version of Open GL that is optimised for embedded systems).

Qt supports a wide range of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, embedded operating systems such as embedded Linux, Windows Embedded as well as the most widely deployed real-time operating systems for embedded devices – VxWorks, Neutrino and INTEGRITY – and popular mobile OSes.

Digia is maintaining 2 versions of Qt, the commercial version and a 30 day free trial is available from qt.digia.com and the open source version from qt-project.org.

Nokia dumps Qt

Nokia has sold the Qt business to Digia including 125 staff mainly from Oslo and Berlin. Digia had already purchased the Qt licensing business from Nokia in March 2011.

Qt is a cross platform set of libraries allowing developers to use the same front-end code for MacOS X, Windows and Linux (as well as other embedded system like Symbian, INFINITY, VxWORKS and QNX). Qt was originally developed by Trolltech which Nokia bought in 2008.

Nokia has lost its way in recent years having dropped its lead in the mobile phone markets (though it still has a large base in 3rd world countries) as is now concentrating on a smartphone market using Microsoft Windows Phone.

Digia is hoping to further develop Qt which has been used by over 450,000 developers and Digia is hoping to rapidly support MS Windows 8, Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

The commercial version of Qt will be maintained at Digia and the open-source variant at Qt-Project.

Samsung gets serious with mobile chips

Samsung is buying the mobile chipset division of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) for $310m. This will add Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth chipsets to Samsung's already hefty portfolio as well as 310 employees and the IP. CSR was formed in 1998 and went public in 2004 and was one of the 'blue eyed' technology companies that was ahead of its time and it dominated the world of Bluetooth followed by GPS and WiFi. Unfortunately in recent times its mobile chipsets haven't been doing so well due to lacklustre sales from partners Nokia and RIM and revenues have fallen by 50% over the last 2 years. Samsung get a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license of CSR's intellectual property rights used in its handset connectivity and location products" which means less royalty payments for them while other handset manufacturers will now have to pay Samsung. Samsung will also get a stronger hold over Apple as they already manufacture the A4 and A5 chipsets, provide some of the retina displays and now own the CSR components used by Apple too. The combined GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth/FM combined chipset market is dominated by Broadcom who control 51% of the market, followed by Texas Instruments (31%), now Samsung play take a bigger role in this $3bn market. Samsung have also taken a 4.9% in the remaining part of CSR.

Nokia releases MeeGo v1.1

Nokia has released version 1.1 of the MeeGo Operating System (OS) which contains Linux Kernel 2.6.35, X.org server 1.9.0, Web Runtime, Qt 4.7, and Qt Mobility 1.0.2. It's available in several versions optimised for the devices that they run on i.e. MeeGo for Handsets, MeeGo for Netbooks, MeeGo for In-Vehicle Entertainment.

The Netbook version is actually 2 versions, one with the completely open source Google Chromium browser and the other with Google's Chrome browser which requires the suer to agree to Google's EULA.

Though the handset version supports Nokia's N900, they say it works but it's not really for end-users yet and the the user interface (UI) isn't ready for prime-time.

The IVE release supports text-to-speech using the open source Festival speech engine and speech recognition using PocketSphynx (which is based on the open source Sphynx speech-to-text system).

Though Nokia are developing MeeGo (which is the combination of Nokia Maemo OS and Intel's Moblin OS) it may be another dead-end OS as Android is starting to dominate the smart-phone market and Google will release their ChromeOS for Netbooks (though Android is already being used on tablets).

Qt (the cross-platform toolset that Nokia acquired with Trolltech) is the key technology that Nokia want to push (it sits on top of MeeGo and Symbian as well as MacOS and Windows) and MeeGo may just be a way to ensure they have an in-house development platform that's use don live devices, but that cant be a long-term strategy (MeeGo is only officially supported on the N900 and Aava devices in terms of handsets).

MeeGo version 1.2 can be expected in 6 months i.e. April and will include a more polished UI and other new features.

Samsung drops Symbian

Following on from the announcement by SonyEricsson that it would not be producing anymore handsets based on Symbian to concentrate on Android, Samsung has also announced it's dropping Symbian and will be developing new handsets based on Android and Windows Phone 7.

This must be a blow for Nokia who are still pushing Symbian and hoping that Symbian^3, now open sourced, would be a competitor to Google's Android and Apple's iOS and to some degree Microsoft's WP7 though earlier version of Windows Mobile haven't been too successful.

Nokia have a confused approach and are utilising MeeGo (their joint Linux venture with Intel combining the best features of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin) as their smartphone operating system, though Symbian^3 also offers smartphone features (though can also be cut down as a dumb OS for cheaper phones).

Though Nokia are still dominant in the phone arena, selling 1.4m phones per day, it's a costly exercise to keep development teams for MeeGo and Symbian when no-one apart from Nokia is using them and Android is becoming the default OS for smartphones (apart from Apple's iOS which they are unlikely to license to other phone vendors).

Maybe Nokia should drop MeeGo, move to Android and admit Google have won and just develop Symbian as a 'dumb' OS for the non smartphone market.

Yahoo and Nokia in bed together

Nokia will announce 'Project Nike' on Monday (Nike being the Goddess of Victory rather than anything shoe related). Though it's all rumour, it's expected that Nokia are working on offering services based on Yahoo Mobile.

Microsoft have their mobile OS and that ties into Microsoft's back-end services such as Bing and such like, Google obviously has Android that ties into Google's back-end services (and the phone doesn't really work nicely unless you tie it into Google).

Nokia has err, Nokia which comprises of the Ovi store, Ovi maps and maybe some Ovi email. Yahoo might just give them the back-end mobile services they need to compete in the very competitive smart-phone arena.

Coincidently Gary Gale who was Director of Geo at Yahoo is leaving on Friday and moving on, is it just a coincident, or are the two related?

Nokia and Intel to go Mee (or MeeGo)

Intel who drove the Moblin initiative (as in MOBile LINux) have joined forces with Nokia's Maemo Linux OS and come up with MeeGo a combined effort taking parts of both.

The system is expected to run on multiple architectures and not just Intel processors (many mobile devices are based on ARM chips).

Moblin hasn't really gone anywhere yet, while Maemo is used on Nokia N700/800/810 tablets and the recently released N900 smartphone.

The combined effort seems more of a defensive move against Android which is making headway in the smartphone arena (and Google giving away Nexus One phones to pretty well any conference it is involved with doesn't hurt it's popularity).

MeeGo does pose interesting questions about the future of Symbian (which is still the most popular phone operating system with an installed base of about 330m phones). The Symbian Foundation recently put all of the OS into the public domain as Symbian^3 with promises for Symbian^4 later this year. There were similar worries when Nokia said Maemo would be used for high end smartphones, so it's likely that this strategy will continue, Symbian for lower end phones and MeeGo for high end ones.

Though MeeGo might be a good OS it will have a struggle with Android, though the biggest loser might well be Windows Mobile 7 which is also due to be announced at Mobile World Congress taking place in Barcelona this week.

Nokia port Qt to Maemo

Nokia have ported Qt (the multi-system GUI layer) to Maemo which is the operating system that runs on their tablets such as the N900. Nokia previously purchased Trolltech who produce Qt which now runs on various UNIX like operating system, MacOS X and Windows and of course Symbian.

The Maemo port means there's a consistent programming interface for Nokia's main platforms and it means programs can easily be ported across systems.

The Maemo version should come out by the end of the year (for V5 of Maemo) and the Symbian version will follow.

Nokia adds Skype to N800 Internet device

Nokia and Skype have added the Skype VoIP application to the N800 WiFi tablet. This will allow users to utilise the Skype application when connected through a nome or public WiFi hotspot.

The tablet seems more a techie toy rather than a useful Internet device.