Nokia selling Qt business

Up to 125 jobs to go from Nokia to Digia

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The mobile telephone manufacturer Nokia is selling its Qt programming technology business to the Finnish software company Digia. Up to 125 Nokia employees are to be transferred to Digia – mainly in Oslo and Berlin.
      No price was announced, but the deal is believed to be worth a few million euros.
     
The selloff of the Qt operations is seen as an indication that Nokia is increasingly focusing its strategy on its Windows Phones, says analyst Sami Sarkamies of Nordea Bank, who has studied developments at Nokia.
      "The sale of the Qt business is a continuation of the change in direction initiated by Nokia in February of last year. The strategy based on the Windows Phone system appears to be cut more deeply in stone."
     
Sarkamies believes that Nokia will not be able to afford anything more than what is absolutely necessary in its research and development operations. Everything that is extra will be pruned away.
      "Previously Nokia could have afforded these extras. Qt technology could have been a part of the Windows Phone strategy, but for some reason they did not want to do that. Digia has freer hands to develop Qt technology further."
     
The deal is very significant for Digia, whose focus is now moving more in the direction of programming products. At present the company has nearly 1,000 employees.
      The announcement of the move raised the share price of both companies on the Helsinki Stock Exchange on Thursday. Nokia gained more than 6.5 per cent, and Digia rose by more than 8 per cent.
     
Qt is a programming technology that makes it possible to develop computer and mobile technologies for different operating systems.
      It is used by about 450,000 developers and thousands of companies. Digia has said that it plans to expand the Qt environment so that it could support more mobile operating systems than before, such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms.
      There is considerable growth potential in the field, owing to the competition among operating systems.
      "Application developers have an everyday problem, on how to get an application moved easily to different platforms without having to rewrite the programme from scratch", Sarkamies says.


Links:
  Digia press release: Digia to acquire Qt from Nokia

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