Developing and distributing QT applications for Nokia… not yet!

This information was posted to Phonegap Google groups also.

Next N900 release (PR1.2) will include QT 4 in the default install. It has been delayed due to various problems observed in the leaked beta.

Also, N8  will be the first device supporting Qt out of the box. It is not shipping yet.

Nokia Qt SDK should allow unified Qt apps for Symbian and Meego:

It is not yet possible to deploy Qt apps through OVI store, so targeting third party apps to Nokia Qt is kind of pointless. If you need to develop to Nokia using a web framework, don’t rely on native QT Webkit, but target to Nokia WRT  instead.

Nokia bought Qt in January 2008. It has taken over two years to ship the first Qt enabled mobile phone. Meanwhile, Apple has released App Store and risen to be the leading smartphone provider with its iPhone…. talk about slow development and the lack of leadership. So the hype around “QT will solve everything” is still just hype… they still don’t have nothing solid out there.

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4 thoughts on “Developing and distributing QT applications for Nokia… not yet!

  1. I am little confused on ‘unified apps for Sybmian and Meego’ part. I just got a book called Qt for Symbian. I am wondering if this indicates different implementations or APIs on different platforms? Agreed on QT is a hype part.

  2. Hey Mikko & Ugur – how’s it going?

    Well, you can’t easily distribute Qt applications for Symbian devices yet. There is a smart installer beta which will help with getting the Qt libraries onto older devices.

    Developing Qt apps for Symbian, if you’re starting now, is probably the smartest way to go though. You can see from the videos they released with the Nokia Qt SDK beta that some pretty big companies are doing so already and you’re unlikely to beat the devices and smart installer to market by much.

    I think any of the top Nokia execs would agree it’s taken them a long time to respond to the iPhone – I seem to remember Tero Ojanpera saying something about them being like a giant supertanker that takes a long time to turn. That doesn’t mean the solution they’ve come up with isn’t a really good one though.

    Sure, Qt is getting hyped but can you really blame them when they’re up against Apple, who make outlandish claims to have invented things that have existed for years and hype “new” features like multitasking and the ability to arrange your apps in folders, which they previously said users didn’t want!

    Mark

    P.S. Ugur, using plain Qt you can target both MeeGo/Maemo and Symbian. If you want to go beyond the APIs provided in Qt Mobility for mobile specific stuff then you need to add platform specific extensions (for now at least). The Qt for Symbian book has lots of info on writing and using Symbian-specific extensions. It doesn’t have anything about the new Nokia Qt SDK though!

  3. Mark, the problem is that the developers are in limbo.

    The customers asks you to do developer a Nokia app, since Nokia still happens to hold a major marketshare in certain countries. Well.. it would be insane to do the traditional Symbian app, because they are going to go away and Symbian development is what it is. On the other hand, Nokia has been promoting Qt for so long now that the customers start asking for Qt. Well… dear customer, your app will run in zeero phones… the customer likes phones you can buy, not videos.

    :(((

    just my 10c (euro)

  4. It’s not correct to say that a Qt app will run on zero phones. As Mark said, there’s the smart installer available (in fact I think Skype make use of it). You just can’t deploy to the Ovi Store (not exactly sure why). Unlike iPhone this is not the only way to distribute apps though.

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