Yeah, sure, this is obviously the strategy here - being able to tell developers that using Qt, they can target Symbian and Maemo devices with the same codebase. And the motivation behind the Intel/Nokia alliance, from Nokia's side, is making sure that the same apps will also run on Moblin devices. Plus Qt runs on Windows Mobile. It's about attracting app developers by saying "if you use our technology/API, you can deploy your work on all of these devices with relatively little or no extra effort for each individual one."

I think this is a really smart move. Let's face it, on the app side, Nokia is late to the party compared to the iPhone and Android - sure, you could write Symbian apps years before both existed, but the app thing is only really exploding now, and Symbian looks pretty dead compared to the 50k apps for the iPhone and even the 5k apps for Android. With Qt, Nokia might be able to convince developers that their platform is worth an investment of time and effort by them, because it's not limited to only Nokia - Qt also runs elsewhere - and because as a well-established open source solution, it would even outlive Nokia's demise. There's less risk for the developer that way.

As for why they couldn't do that with GTK+: Maybe they could, but Qt does have a portability head start over GTK+ (it's available on more platforms - especially when you're talking commercial-grade quality - and its architecture lends itself better to adding new ones) and it's C++ as is Symbian app development already, so it's a better fit there.