Digia has spun off a subsidiary called “The Qt Company” to unify Qt’s commercial and open source efforts, and debuted a low-cost plan for mobile developers.

The Linux-oriented Qt cross-platform development framework has had a tumultuous career, having been passed around Scandinavia over the yearsfrom Trolltech to Nokia and then from Nokia to Digia. Yet, Qt keeps rolling along in both commercial and open source community versions, continually adding support for new platforms and technologies, and gaining extensive support from mobile developers.

Now Qt is its own company, or at least a wholly owned subsidiary under Digia. Finland-based Digia has largely been involved with the commercial versions of Qt since it acquired the platform from Nokia in 2012, but it has also sponsored the community Qt Project as a relatively separate project. Now, both efforts are being unified “under one roof” at The Qt Company and the new QT.io website, says Digia. Meanwhile, Digia will focus on its larger enterprise software business.

A single Qt medical app deployed on multiple device types and platforms
(click image to enlarge)

At QT.io, you can now download free community packages as well as a variety of commercial versions. In the next phase, The Qt Company will migrate technical content from qt-project.org to link directly from the new site under the Developer section.

 
Indie Mobile packages at $26 per month

Digia’s Qt Co. also announced a relatively low-cost Indie Mobile package of the commercial Qt targeted at Android, iOS, and Windows RT mobile developers. The 20 euro (about $26) per month license is designed for hobbyist developers and small companies with revenues under €100,000. The package includes the Qt libraries, Qt Creator, a commercial license, and full commercial development and deployment rights to the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Windows Marketplace. The plan does not include support, commercial add-on features, or Qt Cloud Services.

Digia and the Qt Project have been actively expanding on the mobile front in recent years, and Qt now supports all major mobile platforms, as well as Jolla’s Linux-based Sailfish OS. Qt is also compatible with Linux, Mac, and Windows desktops, as well as embedded OSes including Linux, Windows Embedded, VxWorks, Neutrino, and Integrity. Digia’s commercial platforms include a Qt Enterprise Embedded GUI for Android and Linux, that was updated to Qt. 5.3 in May.

In conjunction with today’s announcement, the company unveiled a slightly modified Qt logo, and released some minor updates: Qt 5.3.2 and Qt Creator 3.2.1. A major new Qt 5.4 version is due by the end of the year, adding support for GNU LGPLv3 licensing, among other enhancements.

According to Qt, the number of Qt developers has grown “exponentially” to about 800,000, spurred on by the 2013 Qt 5.2 release, which added Qt for Android and iOS ports. Within six weeks, Qt 5.2 was downloaded 500,000 times, and it reached one million downloads only four months after the release. Another one million downloads have occurred since the July release of Qt 5.3, says the company.

“With The Qt Company as a separate organizational entity, we feel there is even a greater potential for great success and growth for Qt where we can focus 100% and invest on Qt product and business development as well as geographic expansion,” stated Juha Varelius, Digia Plc., CEO.

 
Further information

Qt 5.3.2 and Qt Creator 3.2.1 are available for download from the new Qt I/O website. More information may be found at the Qt Blog.