Bad News For Nokia Developers, Nokia Dumps Qt For WP7

February 11, 2011 | By Pradeep

The title of this post is not exactly true, but that’s how I consider it. Nokia has decided to drop Qt as their framework for application development for their future smartphones (WP7 based). Nokia will continue to support Qt as their development framework for their existing Symbian devices and the another 100 million Symbian devices they are expected to sell. Along with the Symbian devices, Qt will also remain as the development framework for the upcoming MeeGo based devices. As Windows Phone will be their primary smartphone platform, here is the their info to Nokia developers,

With Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform, we would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging our expertise in hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale.
Microsoft would make available the existing free Windows Phone Developer Tools; Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework to developers. Together, we will provide guidance for developers wishing to port their applications to Windows Phone.

I can hear Windows Phone 7 Developers Joy ! ! !

Happy WP7 Coding.

Thanks to Suresh for the tip.

Full announcement for developers after the break

Nokia and Microsoft today announced plans to form a broad strategic partnership that would combine our complementary strengths and expertise to create a new global mobile ecosystem, one we believe would have all the elements needed to fuel innovation – including search, location, advertising and exciting new devices.
As part of this, Nokia plans to adopt Windows Phone as our primary smartphone strategy, helping drive the future of the platform. This has not been a decision taken lightly by Nokia and we wanted to share some of the key points with our developer community.

Nokia and Microsoft together
The Nokia-Microsoft ecosystem would aim to deliver differentiated and innovative products and have unrivalled scale, product breadth, geographical reach, and brand identity. With Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform, we would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging our expertise in hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale.
Microsoft would make available the existing free Windows Phone Developer Tools; Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework to developers. Together, we will provide guidance for developers wishing to port their applications to Windows Phone.
Nokia and Microsoft would also combine services assets to drive innovation. Nokia’s Ovi Maps, for example, would be at the heart of key Microsoft assets like Bing and AdCenter, and Nokia’s application and content store would be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for Nokia Windows Phones, to deliver a great single commerce experience for developers and consumers alike.
The Qt ecosystem
Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.
Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target.
Nokia Mobile Phones
Nokia Mobile Phones will drive Nokia’s ”web for the next billion” strategy, leveraging Nokia’s innovation and strength in growth markets to connect the next billion people and bring them affordable access to the Internet and applications. This represents a further opportunity for developers. Nokia will leverage our proxy browser technology on mobile phones, as well as continuing to enhance Java support and SDKs, with developers and publishers able to deliver their applications to consumers through the Nokia store.
Supporting our developers
As part of the change in Nokia’s organization announced today, the Services and Developer Experiences (SDX) unit will be responsible for Nokia’s global service portfolio, developer offering, developer community relations, and integration of partner service offering. Forum Nokia will be part of that unit and will continue to support developers for Symbian smartphones and Series 40 mobile phones.
We will strengthen our ability to support developers both globally and in local markets, ensuring that we can work with you wherever you are to bring your latest applications to our store and help you leverage the global revenue opportunity with Symbian and Series 40.
For Nokia Windows Phones, Microsoft would provide tools for application developers to easily and rapidly leverage Nokia’s market reach. The integration of Microsoft Marketplace and Nokia’s content and application store would provide scalable infrastructure and compelling consumer engagement for applications for Nokia Windows Phones.
The combined stores would offer unparalleled distribution. The Ovi Store already delivers content in 190 countries, with local specific content in 90 of those. We are now seeing 4 million downloads a day, with 300,000 users signing up daily and 400,000 developers now working on applications for Nokia on Symbian. In addition to offering operator billing with 103 operators in 32 countries, we plan to support the widest range of business models for our publishers and developers.
We plan to make it easy and profitable for all developers to thrive in the ecosystem, taking advantage of the enablers (API’s) offered by ourselves, Microsoft and other partners – including location, search, monetization and advertising.

What’s next?
As we said, this announcement is about our plans to work with Microsoft and the planning will continue. Our aim is to keep you informed as plans develop, through our Forum Nokia and Ovi Publish websites, newsletters and in person. In the meantime, we want to help you maximize the existing business opportunity, developing for the approximately 50 million Qt capable Symbian smartphones already in use and approximately 150 million more that we target to sell, as well as hundreds of millions of Nokia mobile phones.
We think this is going to be an exciting journey and look forward to having you with us!
Purnima Kochikar
Head of Forum Nokia & Developer Community

About Pradeep Viswav

Pradeep was a Microsoft Student Partner when he was pursuing his Computer Science & Engineering degree. He now works for a MNC. He is passionate about technology and loves to share his knowledge with people. People used to mention him as “A Geek who is not Nerd”. He was fascinated by the Metro Design language and Windows Phone which made him to follow and develop applications for it. Follow him at twitter.com/pradeepviswav

Tagged Developer, windows phone 7

koyce

I don't like the title

bobbycannon

I agree. Very negative and Nokia developers should be happy not upset.

oslik

I can't imagine how they could be happy. They're loosing years of study and work now.

Of course, they may turn this disaster into the opportunity, but it's not going to be so easy…

StevieBallz

Well – if QT would have been supported we would have ended up with loads of alien looking applications – the Metro UI would not have been able to be recreated by the libraries alone without changes by the Developers.

Another important point is that many qt Applications are native applications – which would be the next problem. Therefore this is in no way suprising.

Qt Dude

Well all QT applications always look native and are native, no matter what the platform is (if there is a platform port for the Qt framework itself). You probably didn't know that there is always native code under the hood, for each and every platform. It's would be pure madness on Nokia's part to abandon the Qt in a sense not being able to program with it on WP7, it is one of the most sophisticated and well documented frameworks ever made.

The decision would drive many, many Nokia developers away since working with Qt has been such a pleasure that no one really likes messy and ill-documented Microsoft clay.

David

It is so funny to read comments in other blogs (engadget and other Android fan blogs) and see how they are running around and crying and screaming.

They all talk negative and predict bad future for Nokia and etc. but the the truce behind all these comments is now those uneducated Android fanboys scared that their fragmented OS which spy on you every second and report your information and what you do to Google doesn't have the biggest mobile maker as partner.

HTC had a chance to be the number one partner but sadly they decide to mix things and even tough they make money know all these legal action against them for using Android will not end good for them.

Now that Nokia the biggest mobile maker in the world and also one of the highest quality makers has this partnership these fanboys crying all over internet becuase they are afraid and they know in their hurt this partnership can take them down.
Steve

I remember I used to have many Nokia phones and they all had good quality build. Then HTC started smart phones with Windows Mobile and after that I was a huge fan of HTC and only bought their phones.

But after ecent moves from HTC and Android handsets and not being true number one partner for Windows Phone 7 I really got dissapointed. Even though I am a huge fan of HTC handsets the way things goes right now with HTC I think my next Windows Phone will be NOKIA again.

I really like HTC and this is sad but again seems like NOKIA is a future and they gonna have better quality Windows Phone 7 handset in the market soon.

So yeah NOKIA already stole one cutomer from HTC.
therohan

Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices; continuing to develop strategic applications in Qt for Symbian platform and encouraging application developers to do the same. With 200 million users worldwide and Nokia planning to sell around 150 million more Symbian devices, Symbian still offers unparalleled geographical scale for developers.
Extending the scope of Qt further will be our first MeeGo-related open source device, which we plan to ship later this year. Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target.

Check this to see what other developers have to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfWFvCJJaNs