All hail Qt on Android from Bogdan Vatra. He has released the alpha version of "necessities"

Wow this will probably keep the N9 alive

I don't know if this will keep the n9 alive - I do wonder however if this news had arrived any sooner if it would have influenced the decision to join Google instead of Microsoft.
Regardless, what is more interesting is that application developers can now target yet another platform and this platform is still in it's rising star phase.

It might take a development team like CyanogenMOD to be able to integrate it nicely into the kernels/etc.

But besides that, this article is:

I've come to the conclusion that technology had little if anything to do with Nokia's decision to "partner" Microsoft or with their hiring of ms-elop to do the deed.

Nokia used to be driven by design and engineering.

Then, probably due to Big Investors' pressure, Nokia's management and board switched their priorities on monetizing their leading position instead.

Well, they fumbled their big ticket Navteq and Ovi integration (Symbian may not be the easiest of jungles to live in...) while competitors A and later G managed theirs better and most importantly got devices and new technologies out to the marketplace.

Qt on Android - indeed Qt everywhere (*) - sounds great from an engineering and developers' point of view, but does it directly increase Nokia's revenues? Hmm, I think we have the answer.

I would guess that Nokia's short-lived negotiations with Google revolved around, besides money and level of exclusivity, on whether Google could and would adopt Qt as a top-level component of Android (Google does use Qt elsewhere already). But primarily how Nokia could into that wonderful toll-gate/commission position they now covet.

MS-Ballmer gave Nokia, at least in the short term, a place for their Maps and a small cut of commission revenues. Who cares about technology, their own developer eco-system or employees when there's a last chance to try to validate Nokia bosses vision of their "own" revenue-generating services!

So Qt was more of a sacrifial lamb than a serious driver in this quest for a commission-generating "partner".

Qt of course can still "go places" and it will be interesting to see who will be driving its growth.


(*) Qt everywhere... would've been great for rebuilding secure and throughly integrated IT and communications infrastructure for businesses and governmental sevices while replacing the existing joke sold (actually "leased") by Microsoft. So everybody except MS and elop will end up losers in the deal.

What if Android 2.3 was released in its current state (and with NFC support) but there was no Nexus S/Nexus 2.

And then OUT-OF-FRIGGEN-NOWHERE they release the Nexus S (Feb 2011) and it comes with Android 3.0 but the "hosting" OEM is NOKIA. And Nokia has cut a deal with Google to spread Android everywhere (due to the deep reaches of Nokia) but in turn Google has to adopt Qt in Honeycomb 3.0 and the tablet (also by Nokia) and smartphone versions are exactly the same except the UI and a new dedicated Appstore for tablets.

So developers get 2 tools for android:
-Java (which has great compatibility, easy to develop, but sacrifices speed, and is bound in legals by Oracle)
-Qt (has good compatibility, good to develop, runs decently speedy, completely open source)

Nokia gets a powerful launchpad into the North American market, stops losing (infact potentially gains) investors and now kills off S40 to be replaced by Symbianv3, stops developing for MeeGo (but not Qt) and replaces MeeGo with an earlier released Honeycomb.

Is that a better solution than NOKIA Phone 7?

No, because now NOKIA is dependent on a Google-controlled OS layer. MeeGo gets around the problems of Android and WP7 by placing the whole of the OS beneath the UI in the hands of an independent third party that pulls it all together from existing, independent projects.

Much harder for it to be taken in unilateral directions by someone with a vested interest. It's a better use of resources to contribute to existing open source projects instead of adapting something wholly divorced from existing projects and hoping you aren't saddled with an incompatible fork (for any reason) down the line.

Now, now, you make it sound as if innovation (even on the OS level) is a bad thing.

Innovation on the OS level isn't a bad thing. The problem is that Android and its course are totally controlled by Google. Not that I see large amounts of innovation in Android, mostly I see things reimplemented and reinvented (see the vendor at MWC boasting their windowing system for Android.) The big thing going for it is that Google is behind it, which is also its biggest downside (Google is the only primary company behind it, and calls all the shots internally.)

Hahaha.. Some things re-implemented, but there is innovation nonetheless.

And the MWC company isn't really indicative of what Google is doing. Just a company trying to fill a niche in the tablet space by adding windows to Android. BTW, they aren't the first to accomplish this 'feat'.

And Android is forkable, but like many big projects, unless there is vision or fundamental differences in ideology, there's little reason to. At this point, it may be best to scavenge it for parts -- eg. Dalvik is something that more companies should pay attention to.

For the record, I think QT is cool in that it adds a much needed layer of abstraction above the OS but I think QT could be better if the was yet another layer that separated UI concerns from lower level stuff. I know the API segments these things, but isn't the full QT needed to run QT apps? More layers, man. Layers.