When Microsoft and Nokia announced Nokia’s move to Windows Phone 7, most people assumed the worst for Nokia’s stewardship of the open source Qt, and indeed the company quickly sold its Qt licensing interests to Digia. But it looks like the company still has plans for Qt – and for the Symbian OS. Aaron Seigo, a Qt hacker employed by Nokia, told blogger Brian Proffitt that “Nokia is predicting over 150 million Symbian devices still to come” and “I think they’ve underestimated the longevity of Symbian”.
I don’t think anyone wrote off Qt. Aside it being open source, it’s already in too widespread use off outside of the phone industry.
Damage control, no doubt.
In the summary you state that Nokia “sold its Qt interests to Digia”. The proper statement is that Nokia sold the commercial Qt licensing business to Digia whilst it continues to hold the copyright and will continue to publish Qt under an open source license . QT is still a strategic asset to Nokia as you can see from public statements from CTO Rich Green http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMe1qbqxVa0
I think they overestimated Symbian. And that was why MeeGo was so late, apparently they believed that Symbian was good enought to keep Nokia on top of the market while they developed Meego. But Android was too fast…
As for the 150 million Symbian devices that are going to be sold: They are low-end phones, the Symbian market will only shrink until it dissapears/become completely irrelevant. iPhone and expensive Android phones, on the other hand, have a future. Symbian will only be bought by people that don’t have a lot money to spend on apps (if they had money they would buy a middle/high-end smarthphone, not Symbian). So Symbian app development is not going to be very interesting. And ultimately it will need to compete against cheap androids and the android market…
I’m not very optimistic about QT as a major mobile development platform. All the major phone manufacturers are doing iPhone,Android or windows phone. QT could be used to develop iPhone/Android-NDK apps, but everything else seems to be covered.
Edited 2011-03-16 23:45 UTC
Actually I’m pretty excited with the possibility of working with Qt Quick to create Android applications, as I hate coding Java and XML on Android.
Have you ever looked at the XMLs for declaring UIs on Android? And how much LoC you have to do to create small stupid things? It’s horrible!
Yup that’s Java (or java like) for you
I just received my E7 on Monday. I paid €700 for it and I can tell you I’m very happy with it. For your information, I charged it on Monday and used it intensively. It’s currently at more than half battery. But you probably prefer Android because the home screen scrolls with your finger natively?
Edited 2011-03-17 06:55 UTC
Maybe he prefers Android because the applications, the browser and (the most critical!) text input are so superior that it’s almost too funny to compare.
No question about the applications and the web browser, but I’m curious about the last part : what is it that makes Android’s text input massively superior in your opinion ? Also, which Android phone are we talking about, if it matters in this context ?
“THE” browser? Which one are you talking about? Which browser are you using on Android and why do you prefer it over the other browsers? Mine is Opera mini and I’m very happy about it.
Which text input method are you using? What is so superior to which text input method on Symbian? I use the hardware keyboard and Swype on my E7. I didn’t find anything on Android that was so superior that is was funny.
And finally, which application is so better on Android? So far I’ve installed Opera Mini, Putty, Swype, Angry birds and Fruit ninja. I’m pretty happy with them. So what are you talking about? Can you be more precise please?
Sure (this is in reply to the other comment too).
1) Opera Mini is hardly a real browser and I don’t think it needs much of an explanation in the age of Javascript-based web applications and HTML5. (I have to admit it’s pretty nice for static pages though.)
The S60 browser is seriously bad in rendering (e.g. fonts), control (try touching small links, buttons, etc.), standard compliancy (Javascript, HTML5) and usability (Where are the tabs? Why are there a load of popup questions when accessing secure sites? Why is it so hard to exit?). There’s even a funky issue for developers (Why does an application need greater capabilites – SwEvent – to open the already running browser?)
Opera Mobile is, by experience neither stable, nor fast, nor any more comfortable to use. (I’m an N8/Omnia7/iPhone4/S8500 user and a multiplatform developer, so I know what I’m messing with.)
2) Text input. I’d gladly shoot the guy responsible for taking the portrait QWERTY out of Symbian. Every other platform can provide a usable, small full-QWERTY keyboard, and we’re left with T9 and/or multitapping.
The landscape QWERTY is bad because of the wrong layout (some indentation of the rows would really help; the space button is too small and the left-right arrows next to it are too easy to hit instead), and in general it’s too imprecise (it’s a software issue, see heuristics and other voodoo in iOS). Not to mention that there’s no multitouch, which would greatly help fast typing. (A real shame that the media flagship N8 is not really multitouch-capable.)
Swype is really cool, but it only works in landscape and it only supports a limited number of languages. Android users have it better, there are a lot of language betas available for their Swype.
Baidu Input would be another alternative, but it’s really messy to get running and still ugly after that.
Nevertheless, every text input method pops up another screen for the keyboard. And that’s really primitive and slow. (I’m an avid Nimbuzz user, so I do use the keyboards much. And I can tell.)
3) Applications: there are a lot of missing types of apps. Is there a really usable EPUB/other ebook reader? A PDF reader that doesn’t suck? An FTP client? Music player capable of gapless playback? (I could sit here for a longer while, but I have to go.)
That’s it for round one.
I’m really open for any comments and further questions.
Edited 2011-03-17 17:11 UTC
Thanks for the explanation about input. I don’t agree with some specific points (especially calling current portrait qwerty virtual keyboard implementations usable), but globally you’ve proven your point well.
Edited 2011-03-17 19:33 UTC
To each his own. I prefer the Symbian’s input method. The numeric keyboard in portrait is an advantage for me.
I could make a long list of things that are lacking in Android (power saving, security, multitasking, phone, calendar, OVI map, Qt …) but what’s the point? Some people prefer Android and others prefer Symbian. Some people should understand that their opinion is not universal.
Edited 2011-03-17 19:39 UTC
No, it’s because I would never pay 700€ for something that doesn’t have a decent app store.
I wouldn’t pay €700 for a phone that can’t last 2 days idle. I’m quite happy with my E7. There are several app stores out there that are quite good in my opinion.
If symbian is not mid-end, what exactly is mid-end for you ?
For me, the three price ranges of the phone market are :
-Low-end : typically less than 150 euros, sticks with basic functionality (calling and texting, java games, simple camera and multimedia playback, alphanumeric keypad or touchscreen equivalent), communication-centric UI, good battery life.
-Mid-end : typically between 150 and 400 euros, offers more functionality (good e-mail and basic web browser, opens PDF and office files, better cameras and video, good file explorer, 3G connections) but keeps a communication-centric UI and decent battery life. QWERTY keyboards become more widespread. Third-party apps are available, but not often necessary as the OS does a lot as is. This is the realm of Symbian, BlackberryOS, bada.
-High-end : Large screens, shiny GPU-accelerated interfaces, some specific functionalities like web browsing are much better implemented but surprisingly there’s much less functionality than in the mid-end. That’s because of the “there’s an app for that” mentality : in a way that’s not without reminding the Linux desktop, manufacturers believe that third-party developers will do a better job than them at making their phones great. This is a very interesting model from a commercial standpoint, because manufacturers make money even after having sold the phone and have less work to do on their side. Battery life is terrible. This is the realm of iOS, Android, WP7, maybe QNX too.
Of course, there are exceptions, as an example Android (especially obsolete releases like 1.x) can be found on phones which belong to the mid-end price range, and low-end phones from LG and Samsung sometimes provide QWERTY keyboards (but do a terrible job at managing them). But overall, I still feel there’s a rather clear-cut separation between these three groups, and I can’t see how Symbian can be put in the low-end range, even with a great deal of effort.
You really have no idea what you’re talking about Neolander.
Mid End : Something that costs the same as a smart phone but isn’t as good (software or hardware wise). Primarily purchased by people on the basis of the colour of the phone, and the lack of understanding of the phones available.
It used to be different in Europe than the states and maybe it still is, but a phone that’s 3G capable is required to be used with a monthly data plan, without any consideration of it being “mid end” or “high end”. With various sales and what not, there really isn’t a significant difference in price when bought on contract.
EDIT:
Some overall worse phones are still bought due to legacy compatibility reasons. There are enterprise blackberry apps, and just die hard users that still get them. Plus some still use Win mobile 6 devices for apps unavailable on other platforms. So its not completely trivial when people buy a worse phone for the same amount of money.
Edited 2011-03-17 15:34 UTC
Around here at least, this equivalence between mid-end and high-end is only true if you’re ready to ditch ~40€/month in a phone contract.
For someone who can find good enough plans for ~20€/month, we’re talking about saving 480 euros on the duration of a 24-month contract. That’s quite a lot of money. In many situations, buying a phone with a contract based on the idea that it is cheaper *at purchase time* is deception. It’s the same trick as bank credit : the numbers are smaller, but in the end you pay more.
For those in the know …
What of Nokia’s project to make Qt bindings for Python? It looks like they released a version 1.0 recently… will this project continue on, or will they abandon it? How does it compare currently to PyQt?
6 months ago most things ran flawlessly. I didn’t pursue it further on a project I’m working on because I needed Windows support.
Now that there is full Windows support its time to try it again