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Nokia Acquire Trolltech: Will it Impact on the Handset Market

Nokia has announced plans to acquire Trolltech. Nokia has stated that the purpose of this acquisition is to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to develop its Internet services business.

Looking beyond this initial statement, what is the real purpose of this acquisition for Nokia and its real impact on the handset marketplace?

Nokia's planned acquisition of Trolltech indicates that the company is getting serious about Linux, and signals more challenging times ahead for Symbian.

Currently, Nokia only offers Linux-based MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and even though it has not expressed any specific intentions so far, this acquisition is likely to lead to Nokia introducing other handsets based on Linux in the coming years. For Symbian, it will be a big setback and their market-share of the OS market will rapidly decline if Nokia starts offering Linux devices.

Motorola is a leading proponent of Linux and a Trolltech licensee, and one would have expected Motorola to be the most likely handset vendor to acquire Trolltech. However, Nokia claims that the acquisition is not all about introducing more Linux devices, and that it views Trolltech's Qtopia application platform as complimentary to Symbian.

Nokia believes that the acquisition will also allow it to enable a richer set of Internet services on handsets based on its S60 platform. Further, Nokia will be able to develop applications for multiple platforms from a single source code base, as well as bringing improvements in device UI and time-to-market.

The key question that this development raises, is how deeply the purchase of Trolltech will affect Symbian, and whether Symbian will become the Palm of the future. [ABI Research]

Additional Info:

Nokia announced it will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Norwegian open source software provider Trolltech for about $153 million. Trolltech software and application platforms are used in programs including Skype, Google Earth and Adobe Photoshop Elements.

According to Nokia, the acquisition would accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, enabling development of apps optimized for the Internet, across Nokia's device portfolio and on PCs. Nokia said it plans to continue licensing Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses.

"Common cross-platform layers on top of our software platforms attract innovation and enable Web 2.0 technologies in the mobile space," said Nokia's executive vice president of devices Kai Öistämö in a prepared statement.

"Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40, added he." [FierceMobileContent]

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