Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Ars technica reports on some changes to Nokia's mobile platform strategy. It plans to do more rapid and incremental Symbian releases, while making Qt the "sole focus" of its application development. "Nokia's plan to use Qt for all of its own applications is also significant. It will enable richer user interfaces and more consistency between Symbian and MeeGo. It also sends a strong message to third-party developers that Qt is ready for prime time on Nokia devices. The recent Qt 4.7 release brings some extremely compelling new functionality for building modern touch-friendly mobile software. Taking advantage of these capabilities will make the Symbian user experience better and help ameliorate some of the issues that detract from Symbian's competitiveness. During my recent tests of the N8, I often found myself thinking that the whole experience would be better if Qt was used pervasively in the bundled applications."

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Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 22, 2010 15:57 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

Is it a concidence that IT vendors with human rights problems also end up with developer mindshare problems? Android frenzy is coming on at the same time as Google's well-publicized beef with censorship in the People's Republic of China. And how much of Nokia's current trouble is related to the Iran situation? (Holding Nokia Responsible for Surveilling Dissidents in Iran) How much does an association with problem regimes matter to the top potential employees and ISVs, who platform vendors are courting?

Stop this nonsense...

Posted Oct 22, 2010 16:40 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Do you really believe in this BS? If "problem regimes" have any sway at all then how come so much hardware comes from China? In fact most phone platforms are at least partially built there.

Of course you can use "problem regimes" problem to drum your PR, but it usually backfires: price matters more.

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 22, 2010 18:53 UTC (Fri) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (5 responses)

The Register is reporting that the Symbian Foundation may be going to close:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/22/symbian_wound_down/

They have apparently lost 1/3 of their income; the old boss left and has been replaced by a "money man":

"a source close to Symbian has told The Reg that Holbrow has been appointed to wind down operations and that Foundation employees are being offered redundancy packages."

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 24, 2010 18:04 UTC (Sun) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, it's likely going to shut down but not for lack of funding. Nokia owns Symbian and now that SE and Samsung have said they wont release any more phones with it Nokia doesn't see any use for a foundation that only slows down the decision making. Take it all in-house again.

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 24, 2010 19:48 UTC (Sun) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, also Nokia is giving up on Symbian, so... They might still release phones out of the pipeline over 2011, but they are not developing a Symbian 4 anymore. Those 1800 laid off employees are the Symbian devs.

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 24, 2010 22:23 UTC (Sun) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link] (2 responses)

Eh, what? They have said that they wont be talking about version numbers any more. Symbian^3 will from now on receive all updates that was destined for ^4 as they are ready. Those 1800 employees are coming from all over the company. Please stop spreading FUD. This isn't /.

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 25, 2010 22:00 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (1 responses)

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Nokia-employees-told...

Nokia boosts Qt commitment, changes Symbian strategy (ars technica)

Posted Oct 27, 2010 18:20 UTC (Wed) by sumC (guest, #1262) [Link]

So 95 symbian related employees _could_ lose their job. Thats a far cry from 1800 symbian developers.

Perhaps more importatly - how about a developer phone?

Posted Oct 25, 2010 9:58 UTC (Mon) by tim_small (guest, #35401) [Link]

"some of the issues that detract from Symbian's competitiveness"

Surely one of the biggest things which detracts from Symbian's competitiveness is that AFAIK there are still no developer phones available. The poor people from the Symbian foundation are stuck having to hack together a phone using off the shelf kit - need less to say, it doesn't look much like a Nexus One

That's right, you can hack the Symbian codebase, and then in order to get it on to your own phone, you must successfully push your long-desired feature/bugfix upstream, and wait until Nokia release a phone which incorporates your code, and then buy it.

Do you think that might restrict the size of the Symbian's development community somewhat?