It’s a rather unclear time over at Nokia in Espoo (Finland!), with people coming and going, and changes in development strategy. The latest one is, I think, a good one: Nokia has stated it will commit fully to Qt as the sole application development framework for both Symbian and MeeGo.

Nokia will focus on Qt, and Qt alone, as the sole application development framework for both Symbian and MeeGo. All this means that thorough support for HTML5 comes pretty much as a bonus, as well as the ability to easily create rich application user interfaces for both Symbian and MeeGo. Additionally, Nokia will turn Symbian into a continuously improving platform, foregoing classic releases.

One benefit of this simplified approach is that planned and future improvements in Symbian will be developed in Qt and will be compatible with the existing Symbian^3 platform release,” Nokia states, This means that Nokia’s continued commitment to develop the Symbian platform will benefit not only future users of Symbian-based products, but will result in updates and upgrades for existing Symbian^3 users. The resulting change to a model of continuous evolution replaces the previous release-based model. Nokia will no longer refer to Symbian^3 or Symbian^4. The benefit to consumers will be a constant improvement in the experience of their Symbian-based Nokia products.

“We’re making strategic technology decisions that will accelerate our ability to offer the strongest possible opportunity for developers and the richest possible experience for consumers,” says Rich Green, CTO of Nokia, “For developers, it will open up a huge installed customer base for their applications. For consumers, it means a more compelling engagement with their Nokia product in terms of access to the best applications in the marketplace and a constantly improving product experience.”

Seems like a great idea to me. There’s nothing wrong with Symbian’s core operating system features – it’s the user interface side of it all that just isn’t up to par. Hopefully a full focus on Qt will help the platform greatly.