Nokia Developer News

Nokia has been punishing developers way to often lately. If there is one thing good coming out of this thing, its the fact that if developers jump on MS side, they should be fine for at least a few years.

Bigger problem is the fact that QT developers are extremely reluctant to do that. Pragmatism unfortunately does not play a huge role in developers minds.

What about Qt for WP7. Or are we just stuck using WP7 api's?

By this announcement, I'm afraid you've lost many faithful people (developer and consumers) like myself, who's been a Nokia user ever since I've started using cellphones..

Knowing Nokia this is probably what's going to happen, Symbian's support will start to fade, MeeGo will have the same fate as Maemo, very fast this time though; which is a shame actually.

Looks like Elop is right though, the man has jumped off of the burning platfform, but what he didn't mention is that the sea is cold and deep.. and the man can't swim, so now the man will sink..

Wow what can I say, nokia just flfat out killed any enthusiasm I had to develop on nokia platforms, I never have and never will use a windows platform. You have just killed QT, even worse killed the most promising OS out there in Meego. Elop is the worst thing that has ever happened Nokia.

"Though our plans for MeeGo have been adapted in light of our planned partnership with Microsoft, that device will be compatible with applications developed within the Qt framework and so give Qt developers a further device to target. "
You guys are joking, right? You literally f*cked your Maemo/Meego developers the nth-time in a row. Weak on execution, you choose to flee. What a sad day in the history of a once proud and strong company.

I tried to sign up on app hub to see what developing for wp7 was like, and i cannot since my country, South Africa, is not on the very short list that you are allowed to develop in. Will nokia be pushing to change this?

A sad day for Nokia, hindsight will show how bad this decision really is.

Today's announcement looks like a sabotage. And to be honest Elop looks like MS agent carrying out his mission :(

So this is what its come to ... Stepehen Elop killing of Nokia.

Windows Phone 7 .... are you frickin' kidding me???

WP7 is not a Smartphone OS, Symbian is!!! ...

you have screwed us all

please leave Nokia now Mr Elop.....of to kill another company

I am so sad that all I can say is RIP NOKIA and Finland

So... All the developers (and users) on MeeGo and QT are panicking right now worrying they wasted all their time and money on something that gets killed before it's even born, and the appropriate way to respond to this has been to write large amounts of bureaucrateese and marketspeak?

Let's hope that the story with MS+Novel's Suse wont repeat reapeat with maemo/meego/qt/symbian ...

What is to save now ? and how ?

https://identi.ca//tag/nokia

Today is a sad day... Rather than shake up management and expedite Symbian and Meego around QT; Nokia's CEO decided to appeal to the blind masses. I'm sorry to hear this news, because part of the reason why I loved Nokia was having something different than everyone else... Now I'm at a crossroad which I did not want to be at.

Thanks a lot previous Nokia Management and Corporate personnel; you were responsible for this, not Stephen Elop! He didn't force Nokia to loose market share and value; you did!

I believe that the future is a friend and Nokia can become once again the first, in every meaning.
Let's begin this new adventure, I can't wait to start developing!

So sad, Nokia decided to make suicide.

Mr Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer
Guess your move was to reel in lots of developers which are currently developing for symbian and meego .realize when you
talk of taking developers from Qt to windows phone 7 platform;there is a small problem,MANY PEOPLE WHO USE QT SUPPORT THE LINUX FOUNDATION!!! NOT NOKIA.
Throughly disgruntled at lack of support/service .
1 YEAR FOR MIGRATION ARE YOU KIDDING NOBODY WILL MAKE APPS FOR NOKIA AS PEOPLE WILL WAIT FOR NOKIA WINDOWS PHONE 7
deadly blow for sure

True Purpose of this announcement i guess is to make Microsoft Dream a reality
Give DLL HELL to new Device's Where no OS's has gone before!!!
At least make a QT App Code Convertor!!!

Nokia have just given up control over their future to Microsoft a company that has struggled to adapt to an online World and failed on a number of occasions to deliver a mobile operating system or strategy.

How can Nokia migrate their Symbian users to an OS they don't control?

How can you expect Meego and Qt developers to switch to Windows?

Clearly Nokia has begun it's slide into a commodity hardware manufacturer

Using Qt was a pragmatic decision by developers, no matter what "analysts" are saying. What developers were looking for was a platform were you could create apps which would run on many OS. Qt was doing that.

There were already 3 mobile platforms were Qt was supported: Symbian, Meego (or any propely Linux based OS) and QNX (the OS for Blackberry's tablets). Add desktop OSes into the equation (Any Windows, Linux, MacOS) and you have a very compelling reason to use Qt. Of course Microsoft (nor Apple for that matter) would like that. So this is not only killing Nokia but also helps Apple.

In the short term, Microsoft might benefit from this. Google must be cheering loudly and Apple has one less worry. As for the OS Nokia has choosed, it is worth mentioning that even Bada (if you haven't heard of it, it is the OS developed by Samsung) is running on more devices that WP7. Wise choice, guys

Qt will have a slow and agonizing death.

Fact.

i know nokia is dying .. every platform does eventually .. but this announcement is a quick suicide

Nokia should have choosen MEEGO as it's primary os and Symbian as secondary.......

and nokia should have tried some android hansets also.....

But using a windows phone..............it just SUcks !!!!!

Nokia will lose it's reputation and ground after this

Poor decision by Elop.....

Elop himself is the poorest decision of Nokia

Windows on nokia devices ? I am not Qt developer anymore . . Now you have to learn .Net ! ! ! =(

This text appears to imply that Qt will not be supported on WP7? Given that there's already a functional port to Windows CE/Mobile this seems like a really, really stupid move.

You could use the, it's all just Qt anyway and you can re-compile your new apps for our new platform approach, or you can just screw all of your existing developers again...

Don't underestimate the lingering hatred of M$ among hard-core developers. Not everyone is pragmatic about technology choice.

Everything's future is death,so is Nokia.

Nokia, you had all possibilities to be superb platform for developers: MeeGo and Qt!
And instead of creating your own quality software products, you've just ruined all this stuff for the 3rd party proprietary OS with even no native code development!
P.S.: 2 month ago Nokia's evangelists were saying about bright future of Qt and Symbian/MeeGoo, convincing us to develop for this platform with Qt. Very fast mind changing, i would say...

sorry but this is an awful decision, one of the most stupid Nokia ever did if not the most stupid. Instead of working hard on meeGo as the future open mobile platform and Symbian as the temporary slowly fading out platform and Qt which nicely connects the two platforms for a great transition you are now going with a platform that is already behind the curve and a platform which is damn closed. Not to mention that programming for WP7 with its annoying .NEt is just terrible compared to Qt.

n770 was not compatible with n800, n800 not compatible with N900. Then you abandoned maemo developers by switching to MeeGo. Now you are announcing the WP7 is the main platform. I clearly see no sane developer to wish have any deal with Nokia.
Nokia fails to support so many platforms 3 Symbians and Maemo/Meego and the solution to this is adding another one? Oh, come on.
RIP Nokia

Qt's ease-of-programming is good to have, but the real business attraction of Qt was that you could leverage your investment in a Qt app on more than one platform. Not only Symbian, not only MeeGo, but on Windows, on Mac, Unix and possibly other mobile platforms too.

That business reason has now evaporated.

That business reason has now evaporated.

1) Windows Phone 7 can become one of the biggest mobile platforms for people with ENOUGH DISPOSABLE INCOME to spend on apps. Symbian phones moving down means it will attract poorer people and people who are not going to buy apps anyway. So that is one Qt market disappearing. There will be no MeeGo market to speak of, that is Qt market 2 gone.

2) Then there is now the new threat to Qt's own existence. Qt was essential to Nokia, but now it is not. That means that Qt development for platforms other than Symbian and MeeGo is now suddenly in big trouble. Why would Nokia spend cash on Qt for Mac, for Windows, for Linux. All platforms Nokia has no interest in? That are three more Qt markets disappearing.

What will happen to the Qt-X11 and Linux support?

Basically, Qt is now dead. Not only for mobile development, but also for PC development. It might come alive again if TrollTech is spun off as a separate company, but now it is dead.

Then there is the future proofing. All empty promises. That's a way to build a developer relation too. Not a good one, though.

This is awesome news for those people who already have same awesome Qt Quick apps ready for deployment on the Ovi store. People who worked hard to try and make a decent buck, now no one will make any money whatsoever with these, and especially not in the future.

Thanks Elop, for waisting a sh&tload of my time trying to develop for Nokia devices.

Also your shareholders are loving this news:
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NOK1V.HE

Thanks to this step, I just "unliked" Nokia on my Facebook. The least a loyal user can do. I dont own the company, not its shares, and am not even a developer. Am a simple end user, who over the years developed a liking for Nokia, Symbian as a platform, and was thus a strong supporter of both. I use SE P1i. Was planning to buy E7. But I will never buy a Windows Nokia. Ever.

Here is how I see it:

Someone just got quietly paid several billion $$$ not to continue WP7 under QT. MeeGo will most likely die quiet death by the end of the year.

Way to go Microsoft, cuz Nokia doesn't seem to care. Do you like shooting yourself in the foot?
And here I thought QML will change the world. As speculations go this seems like TrollTech was raped and M$ used Nokia to destroy QT.

Back to Visual Studio 2010. Its quite nice actually.

And go to a stillborn WP7!? LOL It's a guaranteed failure, I think. I've never bought a smartphone with WP7. What seems now, without waiting for Meego, will have to go to the android, unfortunately.

Amazing!

Nokia single-handedly wiped out their entire potential to be something special in the market place. The once-market leader has now become a simple me-too manufacturer of generic mobile devices with no platform of its own.

Now Nokia will be something like HTC, except that HTC is actually does an excellent job at what they're doing, something that a placid and inflexible Nokia can't even dream to match.

With the news today it seems like I need to learn yet another mobile OS and all its quirks. Well.. good thing that I have been playing around with Android from time to time already..

My mobile background: Symbian: 1999, S60: 2000 (yeah, way before it was announced - I'm also one of the authors of Programming for the Series 60 Platform and Symbian OS), Linux: 1994, Qt: 2005 (even Qtopia =)), maemo: 2006, MeeGo: 2010 - was a good run I guess

Nokia needs to be _very_ clear about what it is doing with QT. QT is still a good dev environment for the desktop, but the reason many people were looking at QT (me especially) was I could then take my C++ code very quickly to a mobile device. After this, If I cannot take my code to WP7 then QT is effectively dead in the water, but a WP7 port (A.S.A.P.) means it is very much alive more so than java or .Net .

Entire companies are switching from Java, .NET, objective C to QT. This is such a lovely idea being able to develop once and compile for all. With QT breaking through to Android as well I see no other platform to use but QT.

If you (Nokia) destroy this somehow its just silly. In few years you will ponder what happened and why someone else is making calls for you (and why you need to pay so much for someone elses OS)

Please THINK.

I changed my previous opinion on Nokia only because the adoption of Qt as main dev framework. Qt is great because I can use the same API, and almost the same code, to programm applications for Symbian, MeeGo, KDE, Windows, MacOS... amazing!

Why should I learn a new platform? I could spend the same time to learn how to deploy on Android or iOS where I can find a probably better marketplace for my apps.

I like Qt as many others, so please pay attention on next steps.

... More fragmentation! Well, I'm switching focus to Android now. Nice job there, Elop.

50MM QT "capable" devices....how many actually have QT installed or have enough space available in C: to install QT & or Silverlight. You need to hurry out FW updates with QT & Silverlight baked in.You haven't given any good reason to devs to continue QT or convince new devs to learn QT. Where's a mention of WRT when talking about dev platforms? DOA. WP7 is 1 of the only viable routes that Nokia had, but you blew it by not leveraging QT across platforms as well as pushing Silverlight for Symbian. FAIL

The stockmarket has pronounced a resounding verdict: this announcement lead to 10% fall in share price.

I have little doubt that this will accelerate Nokia's demise. First, this is a terrible deal for Nokia and pretty amazing deal for Microsoft, primarily because Elop's handed over app store sales and search and advertising revenue to MS.

Someone remember Palm? They were once big on Windows Mobile too. Their WM devices were even regarded as good. Did it help them? Absolutely not. They were once a market leader for, in fact the name "Palm" was even synonymous with the whole category of devices.

But they screwed it all up by not caring about their own platform and going the Microsoft-Me-Too Route.

Please Nokia,
you must use meego as a high-device and not for a little group as with maemo!
Yes, now is a bad period (i can know win7 chooise), but I,as many other, hate microsoft mobile os!

A Qt Ambassador
Giovanni

10.88 -0.85‎ (-7.25%‎) Feb 10 4:01pm ET

I really don’t see why should i continue developing applications for the Nokia devices.

We all were so excited about Qt, compatibility between Symbian and MeeGo, Qt everywhere on several types of devices etc. Now Nokia destroyed everything. Now it looks liek you are going to replace it with WP7.

This is massively disappointing. All the time learning Qt and QML, planning and developing Qt apps etc was wasted and everything goes down from toilet.

I am not going to start developing WP7 applications instead of Qt apps that is 100% sure.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/shownews.aspx?id=GADEN20110169247&Sec=NEWS&pfrom=home-Top-Tech

I've just bought a N8 at January, but today I am really thinking about selling it. It's bad idea to promote your top phones choosing this way. Like everyone else I was looking forward to Symbian ^4, studying Qt last year. What did I do that for? I was very liking Palm too...

i have been a nokia user ever since i started using mobile phones , there are millions of people out there using nokia /symbian smartphones and loving it , i love symbian and always loyal to nokia , now that you choosing to use windows OS you gona lose lots of business.whats the point in buying a nokia smartphone now ? there is nothing NOKIA about it coz the main thing which is the OS is gona change

, you forget that we as the millions of consumers who love the symbian OS made your smartphones where is it today.your reliabilty and user friendlyness will die with windows , but then again big companies like nokia wont even reply to our concerns as consumers who support them and put them to where they are now .big companies dont care about their customers opinions ....

cant you make the same phones and use both OS , symbian and windows OS and let us choose which OS we want when we buy the fone ? for example , a new nokia fone model will launch and you can shoose the symbian version or windows version ... i thnk that will be fair and give us to use what we love which is authentic NOKIA and symbian together . nokia has always been a trusted brand

, now with windows , its never gona be reliable again .pls include symbian OS on future models as well as windows .. so we can choose the fone manufacturer we love so much with their brilliant symbian OS , whoever wants a nokia with windows OS can buy onel with windows OS , pls give us choice on nokia smartfones , we love it ...

I'm NOT going to develop applications for WP7 with any tools from Microsoft.
I was excited about the fact that with Qt/c++ it was possible to target all Nokia "smart devices" so I started to port some of my iPhone apps to Qt/c++ but this will be put on hold right now.
When Nokia proves that it's Qt/c++ that is the MAIN development path for ALL of their "smart devices", I'll take this decision under consideration and maybe start to develop for "smart devices" with Qt/c++ again.

Freedom and openness are the two reasons I have a Nokia N900 and the two reasons I became a Qt developer for Maemo and Meego. If you look at the continuum of freedom and openness in the smart phone universe, you can see a strict total ordering: Maemo/Meego > Android > iOS.

By that I mean with iOS, I'm limited in what I can do by Apple's policies; with Android, by the relative inaccessibility of the Linux core (just through JNI) and by the JVM that is incompatible with standard JVMs. With Maemo/Meego, everything aspect of the phone is available to me as a developer and as a user.

Nokia is missing a valuable marketing opportunity by not capitalizing on the freedom and openness that Maemo and Meego represent for developers and consumers. It's clear now that Mr. Elop and the Nokia board of directors don't understand that. How sad. Freedom, open government, and democracy are in the air all over the world. Nokia could have aligned itself with all that, done good, and made money.

Is there any mobile OS brand less desirable to consumers than "Windows Phone"? Even my Microsoft-loving dad doesn't want a "Windows Phone".

I really think it now smells like Motorola around the time of the RAZR 2 when they kept switching OSes in an attempt to "do something" instead of building out their then-superior MOTOMAGX platform. I guess Motorola didn't die, but they're now relegated to "other" in charts. I feel for all the great Nokia employees, though. It must really suck for anyone working at Nokia on Symbian, Meego, Ovi, and QT, along with all the support people.

Hello Android.

Too bad for QT, I hope the Trolltech guys will get back in control of QT before it dies with Nokia.

Goodluck with your suicidal choice Nokia, I won't follow you.

good luck...we will wait that innovation

Does anyone from NOKIA reads those comments ?

i am watching NOKIA's Shares damn they goes down so quick!!!!!! @14:05 they were €-0.85 (-10.36%)

First: I couldn't care less about Nokia nor smart phones or phones in general.
What I do care about is Qt for desktop computers. I thinks it's time to fork those sources out of Nokia into a company or organization that understands the need for a strong cross platform development toolkit. There are people out there who create actual business solutions with Qt.
My thanks to Nokia for releasing Qt under the LGPL. This means Nokia and its poor choices are ultimately irrelevant for Qt.

Seems like it was not exactly vise to bet few months of learning on Nokia's QT framework. Ok, it was not exactly wasted time, but let's wipe our tears and concentrate on what's ahead. So the choices are:
1. Nokia's fading Symbians, unfinished QT or single platform, still-in-diapers MS OS
2. Android, a bit childish at the moment, but getting better every day
3. iOS, with nothing much to comment
4. the rest, webOS, RIM's stuff etc. - still can surprise

Well, the first choice with the history behind, does not invite much optimism. One thing is worse than not to choose the best decision - not choosing the best decision every now and then.

i am still watching NOKIA's Shares

@14:05 they were €-0.85 (-10.36%)
@14:59 they were €-0.98 (-11.95%)

Why didn't Nokia just copy Samsung's strategy? It's not too late!
This seems to work, since Samsung's market share grew a lot last year.

Hey guys at nokia ... cant you see the mistake you are making?
You always said the google slogan "We are not Evil" was fake and now you join Microsoft?
Come on ... everybody can see ....
Microsoft dont care about the consumers.
Good bless there is Google and Android.
I had hope in Nokia ... now .... its all gone.

I Think my 2 Symbian devices will last for a few more years. Then I will switch to Android (The real Smarthphone OS)

bye bye Nokia.

We understand. This is frustrating for many of you, but rest assured we are not walking away from Qt or Symbian. The fact of the matter is 200 million consumers own Symbian devices today and these are people who will own these devices for years. We have also stated today that we are planning to sell an additional 150 million Symbian devices. And we are going to aggressively invest our marketing resources to ensure the success of this effort.

Microsoft reputation not changed
Nokia reputation -100500

Very very very very very BAD IDEA!!! EVEN ANDROID BETTER!!!!

We are also going to invest in continued innovation in these Symbian devices and will share those plans with you soon. There is still a significant market opportunity here and it is larger than any other smartphone family in the world. We will continue to work with you to ensure your commercial success today and into the future. Symbian smartphone owners and consumers are downloading content 80% of the visits they make to the Ovi Store.

Continued:
In the next few weeks we are launching enablers for in app monetization and analytics, among other new tools and enablers. We will provide you with the tools you need to create your great apps and to ensure the ROI that you are seeking. Thank you.

Firstly, this is not end of the world. We will continue to wrote softwares for whichever platforms are in circulation.

Problem is that we put faith in Qt and Nokia's commitment to it's platform.
Unfortunately, Nokia has let down itself and everyone who expected it to have some spine and have faith in it's platform.
Instead, Nokia proved to be jut another profit-mongering corp who jumped the hip on first signs of trouble.

Sorry but at the end of the day why will people develop for Nokia Symbian now that it's gonna go reductant?
In 1-2 years maybe but hey its gonna go bust then it means it'll go bust no saying otherwise!!!
I mean if people will really want to develop then they will now but after 1-2 years after Company's Policy as well as direction seems stable.
Sorry Abut just saying a number like 150 million devices will be sold and then shut downed kindoff gives the product a finality tone.

Why would people want to continue investment of learning time and energy into Nokia qt development for a product that's gonna last 1-2 years at max?
Plus Windows phone 7 development lisensing seems wavery not much detailed to say the least which should have been your priority.
Not saying decision is bad though you guys had to take a choice!!!
But keep QT Development for all platforms alive
till then not conviced....

Its a very sad for Nokia and its employees.
May NOKIA rest in peace.

Did NOT understand why to "replace" Symbian with WinMob7 !!!! They could just co-exist.... Now this move will only be beneficial to the Antivirus companies... Dying to see a Nokia N8 successor running WM7, booting for 10 mins, having low memory after 7 days, 5 virus alert in 1 month, and yes due to software piracy ovi store + MS Marketplace downloads coming down to zero.

what about the most interesting and the platform which had the most potential? What about MeeGo? In your answer you don't even mention it. It all smells a lot like Microsoft's hatred towards freedom and openness and Linux is showing through here. If you were listening you would just continue with phaseout of Symbian and rapid introduction of MeeGo devices. using Qt to develop for both.

I feel really sorry for the peons in the company having to put a brave face on this news. Nokia "had" a killer strategy that they were poorly executing.

QT everywhere was a Killer feature for a developer. Get the developers to be able to not only be able to develop on Linux, Mac and Windows; and be able to deploy to several mobile platforms (and potentially in the future even android and iphone since their are community projects working on that compatibility). I was totally sold on the vision; it made a huge amount of sense for me to spend my time targeting the Nokia Mobile OS's. I was working on a QT application for the Symbian and Meego OS; it is now shelved, I'll cut my losses. I have no intention of working on a WM7 app -- there is no market share.

With QT and Meego, you had the opportunity to take the market this year if you had executed it correctly. I honestly don't understand how Nokia thinks it will stay relevant now that it has tossed in the towel on both of its own OS's. And won't be releasing its "focus" phone until 2012 while, other phone companies already has a WM7 phone out. So, yeah you get a junior os that has some nice features; but you just literally killed the majority of your developer support. How can they trust you. QT everywhere; except where you are going now.

As to the peons who are saying; Symbian will get some support; duh -- of course you have to say that, and I'm sure you will push out what is mostly completed in the pipeline. But what support after that? Your boss has already stated the WM7 is where the company is going, how can any sane person purchase a device from Nokia until Nokia released there WM7 phone, since now everything else is on life support or having the plug pulled?

My condolences to those Nokian's who are going to lose their jobs over what is in my humble opinion, has been one of the largest "strategic suicides" I have ever seen.

If you want to keep developers to keep developing apps for your platform, it needs to support QT, WP7 port is required. WP7 also needs much more features than it currently has, as of now, android wins clearly. Until this is fixed, youre screwed.

1. "We understand. This is frustrating for many of you..." It is frustrating for all of us.
2. You are being too optimistic about a platform that has a due date.
3. Who will rest it's heart on Symbian, QT or Nokia?
4. The problem of Nokia is not Symbian or QT. The problem is to have a traitor as CEO and the awful management of the Ovi Store.
5. The Platform is not Burning!!!! Don't lie. http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/#
6. etc.

I don't see any future for Nokia application development after this. I just bought E7 to finalize some Qt apps for Symbian and Maemo/Meego and now you tell that Symbian will see it's end in few years and you don't even try to make MeeGo a success. Stephen Elop and all behind this move doesn't seem to understand anything about mobiles and looks things only from American point of view. They all should get fired as soon as possible.

I will not buy any Microsoft products ever! I will jump to OpenMoko if there isn't any MeeGo devices this year. MeeGo is easily best operating system for mobile computers with telephone functionality and Nokia goes to Microsoft. Sigh!

you make me splurge $600 on the n8 and waste countless hours of my development time only to throw it all out of the window. f**k off nokia, never again.

With your market share at 22% and falling you decide to team up with a company whose market share is 3% and falling? Only a CEO seeped in Microsoft's ecosystem, and obviously still trying to help it, could consider that a wise decision. The response from your developer community is overwhelmingly negative. The stock shares are down 15% and falling as I write this, which is catastrophic for your investors. So, the two communities who have invested heavily in your prior vision now categorically reject the "new" vision. You don't have a monopoly on the phone market they way Microsoft has on the PC market. Its behavior won't fly in this ecosystem.

I started using the commercial version of Qt at the government agency where I worked just a few months before Qt4.0 was released. The release of QtCreator & Qt-SDK by Nokia put Qt/C++ cross platform development on a world class level and it was attracting many new developers. Your actions today have destroyed that. Fortunately, Qt4 will survive because of the GPL. Nokia may not be so fortunate because Microsoft OWNS the .NET API and thus will gain defacto control over Nokia. Talk to former Novell employees and ask how their "partnership" with Microsoft went.

Having spent quite some time learning QT to develop my app and just last month updated my Nokia phone to a N8 which is now scrap plastic, I want my money back. I looked up Stephen Elop on Wikipedia guess what he came from M$.

RIP Nokia you could be market leader again but not with M$.

I am a loyal customer of you, since my 2nd mobile phone. I am a C++ developer too, although I haven't been into mobile development till now. Lately I was really excited by Qt and the possibilities it gives to a developer to target both Symbian and MeeGo (and impressed by its elegancy and easy of use). So I started to study it, having some good (I think) ideas for new applications, until the unauncement struck me!
So you leave Symbian and Meego, you throw Qt and go for Windows Phone and .NET (which I hate). That's it, you lose me as a developer and as a user. I have no alternatives, I can only go to Android.

DOT.

Otherwise, I can buy a cheap phone with a Windows Phone, and do not feel the difference

I really hope that after fail with WP7 Nokia will have time and money to concentrate on Qt and MeeGo, as it really perspective products. It was a happy day when Nokia bought Trolltech, but now I'm feeling blue. So I wish Nokia to recover from flue and come back to life.

Just total disappointment. I don't know what to say.

Nokia was always my phone of choice and what I'd recommend for others. The only thing sure now is that won't be the case anymore. Not for smartphones and not-smart phones.

Goodjob Elop, Goodluck stock and investors

Farewell Nokia

Sad news today. The only positive outcome of this is that we don't have to wait any longer for Meego and just chose Android today.

Just watched the press conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTCwf6dXZOg
Mr Elop mentioned that Microsoft will bring software and Nokia will bring hardware.
Doesn't that remind you of the big mistake that IBM once made with DOS thinking software is irrelevant? What are we the developers supposed to think of that? Feeling little stab in the back.
I bet Mr Gates is laughing his aoff. Anyways, congrats to everyone at M$. Well played.

I have been writing software for platforms that were already dead when they hit the stores. For example Tapwave and Gizmondo. Platforms come and go. Multi-platform development is a way to go for many of us. But Qt had and still has opportunity to tone down the need for jumping on to next bandwagon every other day. While learning a new platforms isn't usually a big deal (but it always takes some time), code is always more or less tied to specific platform or platforms, no matter how multi-platform development one is doing. This is especially so for small developers who are writing far larger and more complex software than your average BMI calculator that is easy to just rewrite.

Think applications like 3D games. 3D engine runs on top of OpenGL ES, code is written in C++. That kind of app can quite easily be ported to Android, iOS, MeeGo and one could count also Symbian in. There are also frameworks like Airplay SDK to help keeping up with platform fragmentation. But for a small developer, making a total rewrite for WP7 is almost out of question. It's a different matter when starting from scratch and that's what Nokia and MS are perhaps targetting and hoping for as market is still new and small developers can still shine. Small developers are tied to one platform and that's what we developers wan't don't we?

But for many developers like myself, who are anyway doing multiplatform version of my app, WP7 is last one on the list, if it ever makes to the list that is.

Started developing an app in Qt to target MeeGo and Symbian a few months ago, was about to register for Qt certification, but now.. what's the point? Symbian has a limited lifetime according to Elop, MeeGo will become an experimental open-source project (i.e. will receive no funding and will be handed over to the community completely) and WP7 will not support Qt. Nokia has effectively killed Qt, a framework which is a developer's dream - be able to target multiple platforms but still have the power to go native. Nokia motivated its choice with not successfully building an ecosystem fast enough. Seriously? MeeGo would have had potential access to the whole Linux ecosystem and developer base! WP7? All the .NET desktop developers? WP7 will be a closed source mirror of iOS, so what's the incentive of developing for WP7? Does WP7 bring anything new to the marketplace? I honestly feel sad for all the Nokia Qt and Symbian developers who are affected by this pure top management decision. I feel this decision was based purely on carrier requests and not common sense or even a sense of innovation or market disruption...

NOT having Qt support on Windows Mobile affects current development prospects on Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo platforms. Why not have this bridge -in the form of Qt- to better justify current projects (and increase the number of applications in current and future Windows Mobile platform)? Silverlight and Windows will surely stand on their own merits when we get there? No reason to limit -if only by policy- our options. I urge Nokia to rethink their position on Qt support on Windows Mobile.

My speculative conclusion for today. Its been quite a day. Any antitrust lawyers around?

"We think this is going to be an exciting journey and look forward to having you with us"

It's this sort of Newspeak that's been part of the problem all along. Top level managers don't read these blogs, so there's little point begging them to change their minds. Jason Black can only say what he's allowed to say and that's the end of that.

About a year ago, Nokia started the "developers, developers, developers" mantra when they realised 10 years too late that they need an app store and therefore developers to build apps. Then they pushed this at all their conferences. We were their new "focus".

It didn't change anything - it still takes weeks to get published on Ovi, their QA rejects anything that might offend anyone ANYWHERE, no-one answers questions and they did nothing to address the rampant piracy issues - but they were saying their message loudly. I guess they thought that's all that mattered.

Obviously, they missed the point - because the world is divided into Microsoft developers and non-Microsoft developers. They have no idea how fundamental this divide is. If you want to kill a platform, you kill the developer base. And that's what they've just done.

For the rest of us - we backed the wrong horse. Instead of building for iPhone and Android over the last few years I believed that they could and would recover and stuck with Nokia. So it's a little more than "frustrating" - it's sickening.

And all our righteous anger doesn't count for jack.

I just have to re-quote this again because it's beyond belief:

"We think this is going to be an exciting journey and look forward to having you with us"

Why should anyone who is not a complete idiot continue to use Qt? You killed it although it was your biggest asset. Oh and Ms "Head of Forum Nokia & Developer Community" you can get rid of the "Developer Community" in your job description because with Nokia's betrayal there won't be a "Developer Community" anymore. RIP Nokia, hello Android/WebOS.

For a sad laugh: http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1453894

Nokia is screwing it's workers, investors, partners, 3rd party developers and customers with this decision. At this point i really believe even a retarded flipping a coin could take better business decisions than Elop. This-just-can't-be-real

R.I.P. to you both Nokia and M$. Android all the way
Luis

Nokia should clearly state that WP7 will support QT api and keep their promise!

It will be obviously sensible to do so, for a smooth transition from symbian to WP7 and make current app developers
stay with Nokia.

Definetly symbian is old fashion OS and should be replaced , however I don't believe WP7 is the
right choice. Nokia should go with linux OS , if they want to survive in smart phones in next couple of years.

This is what happens if you dont have right person for the job. Have they seen the history of windowsmobile?? has it created ripples at all. You are, "sorry Where" one of the trusted brands, got a good eco system going and suddenly sell yourself to microsoft. Nokia has lost its identity, what happens if microsoft backs off later?? I see only down fall for nokia and elop eventually going back to microsoft.

I'm sure that this partnership with microsoft will lead Nokia to bankrupcy.

Why should anyone take seriously what Nokia says? Why waste time developing for the Nokia devices? In the beginning there was java and symbian, then came the Maemo. After that came the Meego, QT 3 and Symbian. Now windows phone 7 with the tools of MS (probably. net will replace the QT).

And tomorrow? What will be the operating systems and programming language that Nokia will adopt?

It's much more productive for us apply our time developing for Android and IOs.

R.I.P. Nokia.

From a fairly frustrating Symbian background, Qt has been a dream come true! I have apps that are compiling across so many platforms across mobile and desktop. Qt was Nokia's biggest asset and its been great to learn and fun to use.

Unfortunately, this plan of Elop/Ballmer only makes the iOS and Android platforms more attractive now and I think developers (and even users) and going to abandon Nokia in masses go increase the support for the other big 2. In our company (large European operator), we have spent the last year ramping up our Qt development to target Symbian and MeeGo and have just got proper shafted now only having a limited shelf life. Saying that you are going to sell 150million more devices doesn't help at all knowing that there's no future prospect for it. Same goes for users, why bother buying a phone now knowing that it that has no future.

Such an abrupt change of direction was seriously a bad move. I don't understand why not having a multi-OS strategy and maybe test the market first with something new? To completely put all your eggs in a basket (with a big hole in the bottom) is crazy especially in an OS that has not gained any traction.

We and many people had faith in the Qt story and future Symbian/MeeGo devices.

Completely, dumbfounded. Users, developers, your employees, open source community, investors, great technology and pretty much everyone has been shafted with a single blow. That is really an achievement! This hurts nearly all people and that will not be forgotten.

I will go where Qt goes, if that dies, I go to iOS/Android.

PS - seeing Ballmer and Elop on stage together made my skin crawl!

I find this insulting, for Nokia to try to spin this off as "exciting news"!... I bought a Nokia for its Symbian OS, if I wanted Windows Phone OS I would of bought something from HTC or Samsung! Nokia and Symbian was a choice for us, now we are left with no choice! Symbian isn't broken, it's the upper management that failed to plan and execute that's broken. Meego was also miss-managed, it was meant to compliment Symbian in the tablet/netbook segment; thus creating a complete eco-system with the Qt framework as the link to manage both platforms growth. Mr. Elop was suppose to shake up management and expedite this plan, not kill it off and give up Nokia's assetts to microsoft!

Nokia definitely seems like the loser in this deal. What I hate most about this agreement, is the fact that it was a former Microsoft employee who made this official. Rather than salvage, revamp, or just expedite Symbian, Meego around the Qt ecosystem; he gave control of the company's future to the hands of the competition... So much for believing in your brand; I guess he never left Microsoft after all.

Your announcement of your partnership with Microsoft and put Symbian as sideline Operating System yesterday was shocking news to all developers.

You try so hard to make developer confident on future of Symbian with Qt, you try create qt workshop but now everything is totally different.

I have worked with Nokia Symbian for 5+ years, your announcement make doubt to me whether I have to jump with you guy? and what what reasons? this is just my thinking but I think there is no much different to other developers' thinking.

Ecosystem will fail if there is no contribute from the developers, I cannot imagine that Nokia come to this stage.

Dear Nokia

Yes it is a sad day. The surrender to Microsoft. I can image that a lot of Nokia employees have lost faith in management completely.
Is suppose that in a few years we will see IOS and Android and beside this a number of insignificant players.

Taking the fact that an phone lasts a few years, I think Symbian and Meego will be gone in 2014.

Just completed a nice train app, but I will have to port it to Android now and put it on that market. Would be nice to have QT for Android.

Hello everyone,

I have shared my thoughts in details on my blog. You can take a look at
http://www.orison.biz/blogs/chall3ng3r/?p=2881

Best regards,

// chall3ng3r //

According to http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/corporate-governance/insiders-ownership and http://www.tracked.com/person/stephen-elop/insider_trades/?y=2008&ts=MSFT

Stephen Elop owns about 300,000 shares of MSFT (# when he left MSFT) and currently owns 0 (zero) shares of NOK. Not crying conspiracy or anything, just interesting numbers.

Poor, poor Nokia! It was a symbol of Finland, finnish quality phones... What we going to have instead?
Symbian was different, well organised, simple and logical. Having copy-paste (he-he) from the start. It is very-very sad, what I expected to see is reduction of models, but raise in quality and software.
Symbian, imho, needed evolution in GUI and SDK for developers, but not revolution in switching to windows phone 7.
Can hardly express my feelings! Too sad real Nokia with something special has gone.

ive been using nokia all my life, from the 3310, to the 6230, 6110 navigator, N78 N79, E66 E71 E52 E72, N97, 5800 express music, N95 8GB, and now currently i have a N8, i was really hoping that Nokia and Meego would come with something great and that symbian would improve some of its not so major issues, in my eyes at least, ive compared my N8 to the I- phone 4 and HTC desire etc, the best offerings from Android and IOS, and seriously , as good as those phones are, there is nothing that my N8 cant do or any application that lacks which those two have, the user friendliness and the layout and use ability are much better than those two, why would Nokia just abandon what has made them the number 1 manufacturer in the world and so successful, symbian isnt bad at all the user interface just needed to be refreshed and abit more power and speen into the devices and it would be perfect, is Symbian going to be totally abondoned in two years time or will all symbians qualities and knowledge be poured into the microsoft nokia phones with the continued development of symbian, i hope this happens and the two combine instead of just killing symbian, its really a great OS, so JASON BLACK from the nokia forum, what does this mean for us N8 and other Symbian 3 users? will we still get big software updates and improvements that we so patienlty waited for and deserve, or are our phones now totally useless and no continued development to be done for it, i sincerely hope not, and i hope things like ovi maps and the ovi store dont dissapear because they were all great!

* keep working on MeeGo full steam
* until MeeGo is ready make some Android phones
* start supporting/develop Qt for Android (http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/), so all current Qt developers can target then new Nokia/Android phones and simple recompile for Qt/Symbian and Qt/Meego platforms
* license/buy Myriad Alien Dalvik (http://www.myriadgroup.com/Device-Manufacturers/Android-solutions/Alien-Dalvik.aspx) for MeeGo, so you get access to the Android ecosystem

This way you would have kept Qt alive, not abandon your developer community and get access to the Android ecosystem, have your own ecosystem which would have offered more than normal Android phones.

By this move, Nokia has lost faith of all it's developers specially ones who belonged to FOSS community.

Tools etc. for Ovi Store and/or Symbian are not the issue here since I will not develop for a fragmented Nokia and target a "dying middle end" platform only.
Development with Microsoft tools is NOT an option.
What's needed is that you give us "Qt everywhere ...",which is Qt/C++ also for WP7.
This means that I can target endusers which can stand to use a Microsoft OS even if I don't.
Until Qt/C++ is proven to be the main development tool for Nokia WP7 (all Nokia "smart phone" platforms), then I continue with iPhone development and will also soon start with development for Android.

I agree with you Heartion.
At least MeeGo is not totally R.I.P like Symbian, based on this image direct MeeGo R&D investments are cut to a about 1/3: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-32-of-38.jpg
Which is still a huge pile of money if considering Nokia's current top R&D investment amounts.
So Meego will still be there for Qt hacking playground as before. For now with this strategy MeeGo doesn't reach mass market smart phone consumers, but who knows what happens in future.
I feel little bad after developing Qt Quick application for Symbian as it would now have only few year life time. At least I learned Qt and had fun, maybe it will be useful at some point in future. But I'm ready to give Windows Phone 7 a change, it seems that there is already 1000 page pdf and examples available:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/
and if development tools are also free, why not to port and learn some new things.

It is quite interesting to look, despite Android and iOS increasing share, Samsung was not afraid to start it's own platform - Bada, therefore it is very strange to see denial of Symbian. I guess there are some undercover reasons, we don't know.

Guys, we don't know at yet the complete picture, so for us it's tricky to judge. Agree, it looks like MS is gaining more than Nokia but, there are rumors of major investment also from MS side which definitely would change the view of their commitment level. Let's wait. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-is-paying-nokia-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-to-go-with-windows-2011-2

But from developer point of view, having apps also in J2ME, WIndows Mobile, Android and iPhone, I can say that there's no need to rush into WP7 at yet. You can have a look after 6 months. Currently they have sold less than 2 M devices, so who cares to develop anything there. iPhone is for us by far the most important channel revenue wise and thereafter comes operator stores.

So patience, develop now into channels which truly sell, evaluate after 6-9 months if WP7 makes sense. There's no Nokia device with WP7 in the market anyway before that time. It still makes sense to hang around with Qt but we must be aware that Nokia has shown even previously that they can kill the shop any day without blinking an eye, so minimal investments.

When I first saw the N900 I could not believe it: easy to use, professional and still a complete Linux with all the features and possibilities. And later Qt was supported. For me this sounded like a strategy, combining a large and dedicated community with excellent products.

And now? This is for me as a German like Bochum 2.0.
I know a lot of Germans who will never buy anything again from Nokia after they have closed the factory in Bochum.

Now, Mr. Elop you can add me to the list. Thanks a lot!

This sounds like a really good strategy Mr. Elop learned somewhere else.
Ignore experience, dedication and enthusiasm of people.
Just force them to buy your products.

I understand that after the Q4 2010 numbers the markets were baying for blood. In understand that internal processes seem to be so screwed up that nobody can guarantee the timely deliver of any piece of software anymore. So maybe this was inevitable. Maybe Nokia needed to jump, and there were no safe places to land.
Still, it is a sad day, when Europe's last great company in the field of mobile tech declares defeat and switches over to something as good-awful as WP7.
Whatever you're saying to the contrary, Qt is dead, Symbian is a write-off, and nobody in their right mind will do anything but try to leverage existing investments in both as well as possible, the same as Nokia is doing now with the platform. There'll be zero new investment and zero enthusiasm from now on.

Giving up the own IP is the worst decision Nokia or any company could ever take, it should concentrate all efforts on Meego to create a stable and rich ecosystem and design new products ahead of competitors like Nintendo is doing with a 3D game console and not waste another 3-4 years starting from scratch with WP7 that is having no success at all!

Nokia is well able and should be designing and producing with Meego new car navigation+entertainment systems, high end mobile phones, netbooks and tablets, VoIP phones, ATM machines and any other product it can think of that may be profitable and expand & improve, and expand & improve again like Apple and Google are doing!. It has the resources and the how-know on the hardware and software side and that are very good cards still at this point.

After investing that much time, money and efforts Elop is going to throw it all up and destroy the company? Where are the returns of the investment in Qt? What happens with all Symbian and Megoo developers now and with your partner Intel? And most important, what will happen with Nokia in 5 years if the WP7 experiment has no success and it has no plan-B? And that wouldn't be a surprise, after all Microsoft's OS for phones has been around for 15 years with no great success. The difference is Microsoft can take the risk and afford a failure in this market because it's not it's primary source of revenue but Nokia?

This is not only a decision in the wrong direction, it will likely result in a complete failure and the end of Nokia

@benzas seeing such uncertain future for Nokia i wouldn't pay a single penny for it's shares. they closed -13.97% !

I just bought 1 week ago my new nokia ... ive been using nokia all my life anyways this notice for me was the end for this company, i d@m hate winbugs... ill go change my phone for an android next week... Thanks Nokia, but at this point i think you dont realy care about your customers/developers or what they think... wish you luck with microbugs

Being a publisher in Nokia Ovi Store, we are sad to get this letter. We loves Qt because it is OPEN, cross-platform, reusable. We don't need another product or windows tool to learn. We need a customer who love our applications. We don't believe Qt will be applied properly in Windows Phones. We don't believe Qt app will be bought happily in Symbain^N phone, since Nokia see this platform being placed by Windows Phone. We don't believe Qt app will be realized in Meego, since Meego is an "Future product". After all things Nokia provides, Nokia should be a real technology company to sell all various programming languages, tools, NOT PHONES. Nokia is very innovative to bring something NEW, instead of something TRUE.

Nokia what do i say about you my first phone on which i tested games, applications, wallpapers, videos and what not, the n-gage phone, the old 6600 phone so much time i gave to understand the filesystems, hacked so much stuff, use to test my application to any nokia phone i used to come across is going for sucide.
Wish i could lead and could show you have it to be at top with the same stuff u got.

v

Nokia was a proud leading company (if not the first) in this industry. Now it dropped to just another company that makes mobile phones choosing a platform from another leading company. At least the other ones have a choice of what platform they can use at any time. Nokia now has only WP7.

Dropping Meego was the damnest idea ever thought, since it was the only alternative Linux based platform competing with Android, and a promising one. So I'm thinking if you have to quit and drop everything you own and have worked for, for so many years, where do you go?

Symbian and Meego were open-source OSs, why the hell are you going with a closed proprietary one from another company! If you absolutely have to flee, still go open source. Android is Linux based, it's free, open source and very well robust. Give proprietary platforms something to worry about.

Sadly that is not the case and I'm very pessimist. about it. I would never use windows on my phone and never will. It's bad enough i have it on my pc.

Why not offer Qt on Windows Mobile 7? This must be one of the strangest decisions and should worry any investor/shareholder. I don't believe in the various conspiracy theories floating around.. but... I am sure the code for Qt on Windows Mobile 7 already exists on somebodys hard disk at Nokia labs...
Why did Mr. Elop choose to alienate all developers in one go?

come to think of it, even Microsoft should be worried about Nokia's not to offer Qt on Windows Mobile 7. Is Nokia really that commited to Windows Mobile 7? If you have the ability to get all our developers on board why don't you?

How do I delete my profile, don't need it anymore!?

Please, I need information. I have long worked with Nokia devices. I have planned to publish some applications on OVI. I work with Java ME and Netbeans. How does this change affect me?. Do Java ME applications running on Window Phone 7?. Visual Studio supports Java? ME?. I'm Should I rewrite my Java ME applications to run on Windows Phone?. I am very concerned, I have invested much time and money.

The President of Venezuela: Hugo Chavez is business consultant Elop. There are a couple of crazy.

I became very sad and frustrated by the announcement.
I became very angry when I discovered who S. Elop really is : the 8th most important Microsoft share holder.
Until now, I had a deep respect for the so called "scandinavian ethics". But now, I'm afraid that the strong Nordic values definitively disappear.
The only winner at this time is S. Elop himself. Nokia's share goes down. Nokia's supporters, such as developers and faithful customers become frustrated and demotivated. If this agreement does not improve the business development of Nokia, it would anyway not damage Microsoft. The once winner will be S. Elop.
I cannot understand how Nokia's control and monitoring instances can simply accept such a big and obvious conflict of interest. I am desperate.

Since my first mobile phone, I am a Nokia's customer. At the same time, I am (was) a Palm user as PDA. Since Treo did never succeed to seduce me as mobile phone, I am still using my old (but efficient) Palm T5 together with the (obsolete) Palm-Desktop. I am a Thunderbird user and I do not plan to switch to outlook just because current smart phones do better synchronize with outlook.
Since many months (years), I am waiting for a mature replacement for my Palm. Just before I plan to move to Maemo, MeeGo has been announced. Because my Palm T5 was still able to survive some more months, I decided to wait a little bit longer for a good and powerful MeeGo based smart phone ! ...
I am not willing to move to a Windows based mobile phone.
Should I wait now for a WebOS based smart phone (back to Palm) ?
I am really disappointed because this decision is much more than a simple (good or bad ?) agreement between two companies. This decision is the end of my belief in a better, fair and ethical society.
My last hope is that Nokia's share holders do recognize fast enough the missing ethics in Elrop's handling.

Thank you to all, developers within Nokia as well as outside of Nokia for the good and efficient devices and apps you elaborated.
Thank you to Nokia for having supported the free software community.
I wish I will be able to thanks you again in the next years ! ...

We've been developing on Nokia phones for 5 years, we also developed on iPhone, and Android. Since 6 months ago we also tried Windows Phone 7.

Though we never liked Microsoft stuff so much, we have to admit that WP7 is actually the best mobile platform to develop, at present, regarding available developer tools (debugging is so easy that it's almost a child game), user experience (silverlight is really good, the platform has been created with usability in mind, learning from iPhone), stability.
Forget Windows Mobile 6 or CE, it's nothing to compare to.

The only reason not to jump onto WP7, is a religious one: don't be scared, Microsoft is not the evil.

I suggest to all people who are scared to try the free Microsoft Developer Studio Express for Windows Phone, for one day. And then, judge by themselves.

I can't believe they are doing this shit. GOOD LUCK WINNING THE BUSINESS SECTOR WITH A MS SHIT OS. More clients for blackberry.

Completely disappointed with Nokia selling its soul to microshit.

Some of us, a bit more senior than the average, remember the time when Apple sucked and MS were the good guys. Since then, some water has flown under the river.

Symbian has been the best mobile OS so far. I have developed apps that, simply, were not feasible with other mobile OS, and got a large amount of support from fora and directly from Nokia. Unfortunately, being the best counts only a small part.
Maemo was dead before it began. No real commitment, and a single handset that was definitely a missing shot. MeeGo seems to be going the same way.

For WM7 move, let's see what happens. The OS is very good. Nothing to do with its predecessors. But WM represents almost nothing in MS business. MS commitment to WM has been intermitent and very poor. I hope Nokia keeps the level of support to developers that it has been building over many years. This is definitely a key point for me, as developer, to continue with Nokia.

Keep us informed.

quoting : "Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices" ...

After the symbian drop , does this makes sense ?

I know there are some hacks reach the wince6 api on wp7 , let's hope qt will be rebuild on top of it at least ...

i m intersted in nokia as a developer