Ovum has sent some commentary on Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) recent acquisition of Trolltech, and what it means for the mobile industry. The adoption of the Linux-based Qtopia platform across the S60 range will increase the number of applications and service which will run on the devices, and will also be the first environment that will allow developers to write full applications (including UI) without using the native Symbian based application framework. The mass-market S40 phone range has not supported native application development to date: “Adoption of Qt will drastically increase the addressable market for Qt-based applications and for the first time give a credible alternative to writing Java applications. It also raises the competitiveness of Series 40 against its internal rival S60, so could lead to a slower replacement of Series 40 by S60, this will negatively impact new business opportunities for Symbian,” according to Ovum. In terms of other industry players:

Motorola: The Trolltech acquisition leaves Motorola (NYSE: MOT) in an awkward position. It recently announced that it would continue to use Qt as a basis for all its Linux devices. This leaves Motorola beholden to Nokia for a key part of its technology strategy—a situation it was eager to avoid. 

LiMo and Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) OHA: Trolltech has recently announced its membership of the LiMo Foundation (the mobile Linux standardisation group founded by Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Motorola, NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM), Samsung, NEC and Panasonic). Until Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech it looked unlikely that Nokia was going to participate in the group, but now Nokia has effectively joined through the back door. Although this may not have been anticipated by LiMo, Nokia’s membership will certainly help them establish a global standard for mobile Linux, especially now in light of increasing competition from Google’s OHA (Open Handset Alliance) that has the aim of establishing its software platform, Android, as the global standard for Linux.