Trolltech Acquisition - Nokia spends $153 million

Trolltech Acquisition - Nokia spends $153 million. Trolltech is in talks to be bough out by Nokia for $153 million. The acquisition is still subject to regulatory approval and final closure, with 66.43% of shareholders having already accepted the bid. Nokia said that the acquisition will allow it “to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business.”

Nokia plans to use the newly acquired talent to reduce development cycles and redundancy. Take the contact list for example, currently the S40 and S60 guys have to write separate versions of an application that essentially does the same thing. Some may argue that the contact list program on S40 does more than the same application on S60; regardless now this application can be written once and compiled for both S40 and S60 therefore giving Nokia more time to work on bringing more services and better software out.

Trolltech is a recognized software provider with world-class software development platforms and frameworks. In addition to the key software assets, its talented team will play an important role in accelerating the implementation of Nokia’s software strategy. With Trolltech, Nokia and third party developers will be able to develop applications that work in the Internet, across Nokia’s device portfolio and on PCs. Nokia’s software strategy for devices is based on cross-platform development environments, layers of software that run across operating systems, enabling the development of applications across the Nokia device range. Examples of current cross-platform layers are Web runtime, Flash, Java and Open C. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2008.