The new war among high-tech companies, Mobile operating system war, is getting a lot hotter with the introduction of Google G1 phone that is powered by a promising open-source mobile operating system, Android. The world's number 1 cellular phone maker, Nokia, is getting worried that its marker share in cellular phone market will be challenged by other mobile operating systems, should Nokia failed to improve its S60 operating system. The porting of Qt platform for S60 signals that Nokia is trying to invite more developers to program applications for S60.
Qt is a powerful C++ application development framework, which makes it easy for developers to create applications once and then deploy them on any of the Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows Mobile and embedded Linux platforms. With the inclusion of the S60 platform, developers have an additional 80 million* target devices that they can support with their Qt-based applications.
"Qt brings an elegant and intuitive C++ development tool to the S60 platform, improving the ability to develop richer user experiences on the platform, and making S60 on Symbian OS even more attractive for developers to target with their applications and services," said Sebastian Nyström, Vice President of Qt Software, Nokia.
An early technical preview of Qt for S60 is available for download from Qt Software current website www.trolltech.com. This is in line with Qt Software's usual approach of developing Qt openly and working with the community to incorporate feedback throughout the entire development process. Qt on S60 will work with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and later releases. The first production release of Qt for S60 will be available in the second quarter of 2009.
