Nokia continues beefing up it's software portfolio with the acquisition today of Trolltech.
Trolltech has gained success in a small but growing corner of the mobile-phone business, offering widely used software tools for creating programs that can run across a variety of devices, from handsets to PCs to consumer electronics.
Nokia now has a firm control not only of the Symbian platform, but now the linux mobile platform creating strong cross platform strategy with Symbian at the top and Linux at the bottom. Motorola appears to be the big loser from this transaction. Not only does it use Trolltech's Qtopia cross development platform now controlled by Nokia, but it is being squeezed by the Koreans eating their lunch from the bottom up. Another loser is Microsoft and their mobile platform. Microsoft runs the real risk of being marginalized with it's closed stack. This is because mobile applications are expense to develop and deploy and the revenue opportunity is much smaller per handset. However the market is target rich with over a billion mobile devices in circulation. This means you need a cross platform strategy which is exactly what Nokia is trying to achieve. What we are witnessing (and over the next 2-5 years) a complete realignment of the mobile industry both from a network and device perspective. This is very good news for the consumer.