Leading mobile phone manufacturer Nokia recently proclaimed the development of the official Qt port to Maemo 5 and published an initial Technology Preview release. This latest initiative of Nokia will facilitate developers to target the imminent Nokia N900 device. It also ascertains that applications can be ported to all Qt’s supported platforms like the next Maemo 6 release as well as Symbian and Windows Mobile.
The Qt port is designed specifically to work with the Maemo 5 environment. It will incorporate the community-driven ‘Qt for Maemo’ project that was designed as result of substantial contributions and enhancements.
“With this announcement and our upcoming port of Qt to the Symbian platform, we will quickly see Qt established as a leading framework for mobile application development. Developers will be able to use Qt as a framework to create powerful native applications and with Qt’s Webkit integration, it also provides them with a platform for creating web applications and services. Qt’s support for Maemo 5, Maemo 6, Symbian, as well as Windows Mobile makes Qt the most sensible choice for developers looking to target multiple devices and achieve the broadest reach with their innovations,” mentioned Sebastian Nyström, Vice President of Application Services and Frameworks at Nokia.
The port will be based on Qt’s forthcoming version 4.6 and is scheduled for final release in Q1 of 2010. The beta release of Qt 4.6, including the Symbian port, will be launched next week at the Qt Developer Days conference in Munich.