Nokia - TrollTech update

More on the rationale I raised in a previous post on this buyout. But I think it misses a core point that I will get to in a minute. –

Nokia is responding to tectonic market shifts. These days, when consumers buy digital content—such as music or a movie—they want to be able to pay for it once and move it easily between different devices they own. What’s more, analysts say, consumer expectations for software on phones have changed dramatically since Apple’s iPhone went on the market last year.

Trolltech’s Qt technology addresses both issues, by allowing programs, services, and content to run easily on various devices while at the same time ensuring a consistent look and feel. That should help bring Nokia’s user experience more in line with Apple’s precedent-setting software interface. And it should also help the company more easily incorporate Web 2.0 services such as social networking into the mobile world. “This is the first in a series of moves we are going to see from Nokia to fix the software gap,” says Richard Windsor, a mobile analyst at Nomura Securities in London.

At the same time, buying Trolltech helps fend off Google. Nokia is keen to propagate high-end phone features from its priciest models into midrange phones, but runs into big software challenges making the move. That’s precisely the opportunity Google is targeting with its Android initiative (BusinessWeek.com, 1/22/08), which aims to provide a standard, inexpensive software environment for mass-market phones—something the industry has long lacked. If Nokia can get there first, it stays ahead of the search giant.

the article goes on to suggest that this deal is a problem for Motorola which I agree wtih. But then why is this deal not a problem of Google Dog? Its the structure of it my friends. TrollTech is NOT open source. If you don’t believe me go to www.trolltech.com and enter ’source code’ in their search bar. TrollTech admits that source code is not available, which is one of the hallmarks of a Open Source GPL2 or 3 license. Contrast that with Android where the source code will be available once the final API is released.

That marks a strategic battle line. For Nokia that means that their TrollTech offerings move at the speed of the development staff for fixes, updates and additions. On Android with the source available fixes can be identified quickly as many eyes can be placed on a problem once encountered. Whole additions can be wrought from anybody with the skills. Hence we see Google offering prizes now for development on Android. To do something like that on Qt would be impossible without the permission of Nokia. Essentially its the old The Cathedral and Bazaar paradigm all over again.

Nokia will advance their position with this purchase. But they miss the leverage provided by Open Source.

Linky.