ESPOO, Finland – Way back in January news emerged of Nokia’s plan to buy Trolltech. In mainstream terms it’s a little known organization, but despite the lack of glitz this is a smart outfit equipped with world class cross-platform development software and tools. So today’s news that the acquisition has been unconditionally approved by the European Commission marks an important milestone on Nokia’s journey towards enabling everyone to access the software and services they want on multiple platforms and devices, a vision championed in the recent evolution of Ovi.
This concept of having software and services accessible from an ultra diverse range of devices is something that stretches beyond bringing Trolltech into the Nokia fold. Ari Jaaksi, Nokia’s head of software, echoed this idea in his keynote talk last week at the Handsets World event, alluding to “a world where everyone can be connected”.
Similarly, this vision extends into the activities of the new Nokia Research Centre in Lausanne in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, where the teams are exploring the idea of an “Internet of Things”, where devices and software can harvest physical information from the real world and enable us to share beyond the boundaries of existing technologies.
It’s clear that flexibility is one of the key threads of next-gen software development moving forward, and with the likes of Trolltech onboard broadening horizons and the reality of widespread and rapidly deployed cross-platform software becomes tangible and exciting.
What do you think? Is cross-platform software an essential strand in the evolution of mobile software and services?
Photo from Joe Shlabotnik