Nokia sells Qt cross-platform software framework to Digia

Nokia has sold its Qt business to Helskinki-based Digia. According to the press release the sales includes:

… all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.

Digia had already acquired the Qt commercial licensing business from Nokia in March 2011. Up to 125 people will transfer from Nokia to Digia.

This is a move that makes complete sense, given that Qt is no longer central to Nokia’s plans. I once hoped that Nokia would port Qt to Windows Phone and the Windows Metro runtime in order to unify its development platform but it seems that if anyone will do that, it is Digia. It is not clear from the release whether Digia’s Windows 8 plans include the new runtime, but you would imagine that it does since as far as I know Qt already works fine on the Windows 8 desktop side.

See Digia’s Qt site for more info.