Company profile: Mobile Linux pioneer Trolltech

The release of the Greenphone — the first open Linux-based handset that developers could programme themselves — in August was probably the first many people had heard of Trolltech.

But the Norwegian company, which in July became only the second Linux operation after Red Hat to float its shares publicly, had already played its part in developing some of the world's best-known software brands, including Adobe Photoshop Elements, Skype and Google Earth. And these are just a few of the thousands of applications using Trolltech's Qt cross-platform application development tool or its mobile spin-off Qtopia; others include NASA (for flight simulators), Volvo (for its human-machine interface for bus drivers) and Sony (for the Mylo personal communicator).

The idea for Qt began in 1990 when Eirik Chambe-Eng and Haavard Nord, two computer science graduates from the Norwegian Institute of Technology, were working together on developing a C++ database application for ultrasound images, which needed to run across Windows, Mac and Unix systems.

"The big challenge in the project was that we could either create the software three times or create a tool to make it once and run it on all platforms," Chambe-Eng tells ZDNet UK. "We found a few tools but they were all bad — we were young and naïve and said we could do better."

So they did. Their graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit became Qt, and in 1994 the pair formed Trolltech as "a commercial setting for this idea of creating the world's best cross-platform development tool," according to Chambe-Eng.

Nord and Chambe-Eng's first big break came with a 1995 contract to develop Qt-based software for a Norwegian visual enterprise modelling company called Metis. In the middle of that year, Qt made its public debut on the dual-licensed basis that it still maintains — paid-for for commercial use, and free for open-source development.

In 1996 the firm gained a second customer, selling 10 commercial licences to the European Space Agency. Later in the year, the Qt-based KDE Linux desktop environment and development tool was launched, solidifying Qt's position in the C++ Linux GUI market.

The company began to expand overseas, establishing bases in Australia and, in 2000, the US. That year also saw the release of Qt/Embedded (now Qtopia Core) and Qtopia, an application platform for handheld Linux devices. Cue multiple awards and half a decade spent establishing a 4,500-strong customer base.

Now fast forward to late 2006. Having floated on the Oslo Stock Exchange, Trolltech has also just released Qt version 4.2. This new version is the first to include QGraphicsView, an item-based canvas application programming interface (API), and developers are giving the company positive feedback. "Last year 80 percent of our revenue came from the Qt side," Chambe-Eng points out.

Trolltech is probably the leader in trying to get an open Linux platform across multiple handset manufacturers.

Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis

But the battleground is now increasingly moving to the mobile sphere, as feature phones and smartphones gain ever more functionality and processing power. Operating system (OS) behemoth Symbian is even making hopeful rumblings about the handset taking over from PCs and laptops within five years. Small-scale proprietary systems aside, Symbian and Windows Mobile are the ones to beat but, in the midst of the fray, Linux is steadily gaining traction in the handset market.

"Linux is going to be very important in the embedded space but it's not clear yet what the winning distribution is going to be," says RedMonk analyst James Governor. "The space is still fairly fragmented."

Handset giants Motorola and NTT Docomo are two examples of manufacturers that use their own Linux platforms, although Motorola is increasingly using Qtopia for devices such as the E680 and the Ming phone — fast becoming the Chinese market's answer to the RAZR in terms of success.

But major manufacturers like to retain control of their operating systems, whether or not they are based on open source. As this keeps eager developers from their full potential in creating new and innovative applications, Trolltech decided to...