"We just like Linux"
What’s wrong about this response from Trolltech’s TCO?
The market is very exciting right now and growing rapidly. With Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Latest News about Nokia and Palm’s (Nasdaq: PALM) Latest News about Palm recent announcements in support of Linux, we see a lot more promise around the growing shipments of Linux-based devices in the marketplace.
The answer is quite simple, actually: Trolltech product, QT, is not used neither by Nokia nor by Palm; both companies have their own version of GTK+. “But Trolltech doesn’t have a mobile version!” you may be saying by now. Actually, Trolltech started developing a “mobile desktop” (much like Nokia’s Hildon or GPE) but it was completely closed source; some guys start developing an open version called Opie, but Trolltech decided to open their platform and both projects simply halted (or, at least, there was no news about both projects.)
To me, it sounds much like the guy just wanted to say “Yeah, we screwed our position on the mobile marked, but we like Linux.”
Edit 1: Just correcting myself: it looks like Opie is really dead (last release may last year), but QTopia still is being updated: there is a release candidate from May this year, but they are announcing it as a single framework, not a desktop environment or application suite for embedded Linux.
