Being the developer of a Qt-based mobile solution is really really nice nowadays – especially as Android support is well on its way. For all those of you new to the topic: the moment Qt has been ported, you can run your Qt-based applications on the operating system.

The man pictured on the right is Bogdan Vatra, the brain behind the Qt port – let’s see what he has to say!

Please tell us more about yourself
I am Bogdan Vatra, and I work for Route 66. Route 66 is a major Romanian company. (editors remark: they do navigation).

What has motivated you to port Qt to Android
I love Qt, and I love Android. Do I need more motivation?

Ok, I have to give credit where credit is due: Nokia started a project called LightHouse, which makes porting really easy…

Sorry for the stupid question, but what is LightHouse
LightHouse is a project to make porting Qt easy. Essentially, you just need to create a plugin which moves your content to the screen of the device. In my case, I did that and ported the shared memory concept and semaphore model -> done.

Given this: is your port complete?
No. But the main modules of Qt are there.

I am still missing OpenGL and most multimedia APIs. Furthermore, there is no support for an on-screen keyboard at the moment…

As a developer: what must I do to support Android?
Download my port and recompile. But you can’t release the results yet, as the LightHouse branch is still experimental. So we need to wait until it gets merged into the main Qt branch…

Do you have a timeframe for that?
Sorry, no – this depends on Nokia more than on me.

Given that Android is a competitor – how has Nokia reacted to the port?
They didn’t know about it until a few days ago – but have been very happy about it since.

Where can we find out more?
The project is hosted at Google Code – hit the URL below:
http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/

So far, the folks at Symbian’s managed to keep the content signing online – however, the recent price reduction seems to have caused them a fair bit of eekers.

A Symbian employee called Dan M has just posted the following:

We are currently experiencing some problems with Content ID purchase.

In some cases, when you make your PayPal payment, the content IDs won’t appear in your account. This is because of a problem with the payment verification messages from PayPal not making it through to our server.

If this happens to you, you must contact us to have the transaction manually verified.

Please send an email to symbiansigned@symbian.org with the five digit Invoice ID of your transaction so that we can quickly find and verify your transaction.

Affected customers can find out more below:
http://developer.symbian.org/forum/showthread.php?p=18513#post18513

When it comes to mobile devices, analysts usually look just at the processor. However, the CPU alone does not make a device – it also takes the baseband processor which handles communication.

Strategy Analytics performed a tally of baseband makers, and ended up with the following chart – it shows who produced how much in Q3 2009:

Source: Strategy Analytics

Traditionally, integrated development environments were file oriented – if you edited code, you edited it on a file-by-file basis.

Code Bubbles is an experimental Java IDE which goes a different way. In it, functions are the elemental parts of an application: you edit code on a per-function level, and can open calling and called functions easily.

A video showing the concept is below – set it to a lower resolution on a slower machine:

We’ve heard rumors about Silverlight for Symbian in the past – the beta has now been released:

Further information can be had via the URL below:
http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/devices/symbian/

I have to admit that I am somewhat slow here – Nokia’s Ovi Suite never really interested me too much. However, they have just released another update.

According to SoftPedia, version 2.1.1.1 adds the following new features:

- Critical fixes for sync and device updates;
- Critical bug fixes for device software updater in Windows 7;
- Important fixes preventing repeating calendar entry time shifting in time zones west from GMT;
- Important fixes and stability improvements for contacts sync.

As usual, expect the bugging to start soon if you already have Ovi Suite on your PC…

The US smartphone market is especially interesting for mobile developers, as it has traditionally been extremely strong when it comes to moving content. The US-based company comScore has just released a bit of data on the matter.

First of all, a look at the vendors on an OEM level – this figure includes both dumbphones and smartphones alike:

Another classic metric is the one showing the platforms – here is ComScore’s take on this matter:

Further information can be had via the URL below:
http://www.comscore.com/index.php/layout/set/ …

In the past, quite a few developers have reported issues with their content being invisible on Ovi (not ranked down, but invisible).

This could have something to do with the “duplicate name problem”:

We want to make you aware of a solution to a problem you might face in Ovi Store with the purchase of your content if you try to publish two different content files in Ovi Publish with the exact same naming convention. If you attempt to publish two different content files with the same name, the end user may experience a problem when attempting to purchase or download your content from OVI Store to their device.

Here are some scenarios and suggestions on how to ensure users discover and download the right content.

…

Further information at the URL below:
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/ovi-publisher-alert/ …

Microsoft’s Silverlight is best described as Microsoft’s take at Flash – as it is intended to be a cross-platform technology, Microsoft initially stated intentions to bring it out to Symbian.

Mary Jo Foley, a respected Microsoft expert, now states the following – according to her, two files were posted and quickly pulled:

From the description of the tools:

“The installable executable file enables users to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform. The executable file includes the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices, the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition emulator, sample applications, and developer documentation.”

And from the description of the Silverlight for Symbian beta:

“The installable executable enables user to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform.”

Her guess is that the product will be released during the MIX conference, which will be held in a few days…

Nokia is the biggest single maker of mobile phones – whether you like it or not. Thus, their forecasts are pretty important for the industry.

Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:

Nokia repeated it expected the 2010 phone market to grow 10 percent, also according to its new forecast, while its market share would be unchanged at 34 percent.

As usual, the really significant numbers (aka amnou8nt of Symbian phones) weren’t given – but it nevertheless is good to know…