Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech, a recognized software provider with world-class software development platforms and frameworks headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Nokia will offer NOK 16 per share in cash and the board of directors of Trolltech has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept Nokia's Offer. The acquisition of Trolltech, subject to customary closing conditions, will enable Nokia to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business. The offer is expected to be open for acceptance for a period of four weeks and to be completed in the second quarter of 2008.
Nokia aims to continue the development of Trolltech's products and support of new and existing customers, and will take further the open source development culture found in Trolltech. Nokia intends to continue to enhance Trolltech products through active and ongoing development, for both desktop and mobile. To further stimulate industry innovation based on Trolltech's products, Nokia plans to continue to license Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses.
"The technology landscape evolves and, for Nokia, software plays a major role in our growth strategy for devices, PCs and the integration with the Internet. We continue to focus on areas where we can differentiate and add more value. Common cross-platform layers on top of our software platforms attract innovation and enable Web 2.0 technologies in the mobile space. Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40," said Kai Öistämö, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I really like Trolltech, and the work they do in the open source community. Nokia, regardless of what they say now, I'm not sure they'll really follow through on those promises, or be the best company to lead Trolltech in the future.
n'tfeed the trolltech"The gist of it says that Nokia will bring major backing to it allowing it to "accelerate our cross-platform software capabilities and grow Qt and Qtopia significantly in desktop and mass-volume device markets."
Further down.... "In order to further stimulate industry innovation, Nokia will, as Trolltech has done throughout the history, continue to drive the licensing of Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses."
The latter point covers any quams i may have. I subscribe to the commercial version but i like the fact that it's opensource as well.
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