What Does Nokia Have in Mind for Qt?

DailySocial for the past couple of months has been running DevStart, a mobile apps development competition, on behalf of Nokia using its Qt platform with MeeGo as its target device. It's somewhat a curiosity why Nokia Indonesia decided to press on with the event even though it has practically abandoned MeeGo before it was even properly launched.

MeeGo was the mobile platform that Nokia was prepping to become the foundation of its future, but that was before Stephen Elop took over as CEO and brought on Microsoft's Windows Phone to ruin MeeGo's party.

The Linux-based mobile operating system was then relegated to a curiosity, a pet project done simply to see out its final development phase before being cast off as another mark in history. The N9 is all but confirmed to be the one and only commercial MeeGo device by Nokia.

Earlier this month there was a rumor published by DigiTimes that Intel was going to abandon MeeGo as it has difficulties in finding a new marquee partner following Nokia's exit from developing the OS any further.

Indeed, within days, Intel signed a deal with Google to have Android devices running on Intel's future processors. While this may not be the definitive nail in the coffin for MeeGo, it's certainly pretty close to it.

With MeeGo's future practically gone, there's seemingly little point to have third party developers getting on board and develop applications for it. However, Narenda Wicaksono, the company's developer relations for Indonesia offered an explanation. He said, "developer shouldn't care about the OS, they care about the development platform, OS is only vehicle for their product/brand."

By platform, he means Qt. For Nokia, Qt will be the underlying platform going forward, in addition to Microsoft's .net and Silverlight for Windows Phone.

Despite the clear roadmap to Windows Phone, Nokia seems curiously adamant on the survival and continuous development of Qt environment in the mobile space as the company relies on Qt for its non-Windows Phone devices. Currently this means Symbian, the ones meant to be replaced by Microsoft's software.

Symbian itself is scheduled to be terminated within a few years as Nokia ramps up its arsenal of Windows Phone devices. In the mean time however, it's stepping up development of Symbian with Anna released just a few months ago and Belle launched more recently. So what happens to Qt when Symbian goes away and MeeGo fades into history?

Something in the works Andri Yadi, head of Dycode, a multiplatform mobile applications company based in Bandung, is confident that Qt will live on as Nokia will have two platforms going forward, one low end, and one Windows Phone. He said that the S40 platform used by the low end devices will evolve and he expects that Qt will have a significant play in that space.

Wicaksono hints at the same path. While he declined to elaborate on the plans for the low end devices, he said that Nokia has something in the works to ensure Qt's continuing role in the mobile space.

Horace Dediu at Asymco is counting the days when smartphones will become the regular phones as opposed to dumb phones or so called feature phones. He estimates that by this time next year half of the US mobile market will be smartphones. On the other hand, developing regions such as Africa and Asia will embrace the lower end market due to affordability.

Nokia has a massive proportion of its devices in the low end category but it has been declining. In 2008, it sold over 100 million non-smartphones per quarter or 40% of the market, but today it has dropped to around 80 million per quarter for 28% of the market. Nokia now sells much less in a market that has grown significantly larger.

The 1.5 billion S40 devices that Nokia had at the end of 2010 will easily take a big hit from the Chinese makers such as ZTE and Huawei in the near future. In Indonesia, local vendor Nexian is already taking away a large chunk of that market.

Nokia talks about developing and empowering the next billion mobile phone users. It's going to take a lot of effort to fight off the crunch from iOS on the top end and Android on all sides if it's going to grab another billion unit sales.

MeeGo with the N9, amazing phone that it is, would have been the ideal weapon to defend and recapture the top end but Windows Phone isn't too bad either although Microsoft has so far failed to attract an army of consumers to its platform.

What remains to be seen is what Nokia will do with the low end mass market considering it's pretty much the only segment remaining in which Qt can play a significant part in Nokia's strategy.