The Qt Company (pronounced "cute"; formerly Trolltech and Quasar Technologies) is a software company based in

Espoo Espoo (, ; sv, Esbo) is a city and municipality in the region of Uusimaa in the Republic of Finland. It is located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, bordering the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, Kirkkonummi, Vihti and Nurmijärvi ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It oversees the development of its Qt application framework within the

Qt Project The Qt Project is an open collaboration effort to coordinate the development of the Qt software framework. Initially founded by Nokia in 2011, the project is now led by The Qt Company. History Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng (the origina ...

. It was formed following the acquisition of Qt by Digia, but was later spun off into a separate, publicly traded company. It has core R&D in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

, Norway, as well as large engineering teams in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, Germany, and Oulu, Finland. The Qt Group operates in China, Finland, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Norway, the US, France, UK, Italy and India.

Products

The company provides software development platforms and frameworks, as well as expert consulting services. Its flagship product is Qt, a multi-platform Graphical User Interface (

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

) framework written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

. Qt is popular with application developers using C++ but is supported by bindings for other programming languages too, such as

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

. Qt also includes packages such as data structures and a networking library. The popular free and

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

KDE Plasma

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

and software compilation uses the Qt library. The company also employs several

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

developers. In 2001 Trolltech introduced

Qtopia Qt Extended (named Qtopia before September 30, 2008) is an application platform for embedded Linux-based mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, video projectors and mobile phones. It was initially developed by Qt Software, ...

which is based on Qt. Qtopia is an application platform for Linux-based devices such as mobile phones, portable media players, and home media. It is also used in many non-consumer products such as medical instruments and industrial devices. Qtopia Phone Edition was released in 2004, and their Greenphone

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

is based on this platform.

History

Trolltech was founded by Eirik Chambe-Eng and Haavard Nord on 4 March 1994. They started writing Qt in 1991, and since then Qt has steadily expanded and improved. Trolltech completed an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

(IPO) on the Oslo Stock Exchange in July, 2006. On 28 January 2008,

Nokia Corporation Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

announced that they had entered into an agreement that Nokia would make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech. The total cost for Nokia was approximately €104 million. On 5 June 2008 Nokia's voluntary tender offer was approved for all the shares in Trolltech. By 17 June 2008, Nokia had completed its acquisition of Trolltech. On 30 September 2008, Trolltech was renamed as Qt Software, and Qtopia was renamed as Qt Extended. On 11 August 2009, the company's name was changed to Qt Development Frameworks. Nokia sold the commercial licensing business of Qt to Digia in March 2011. The remainder of the assets were subsequently acquired by Digia in 2012. In September 2014, Digia formed The Qt Company, a wholly owned subsidiary dedicated to the development and governance of the Qt platform. In May 2016, the company went public on NASDAQ Helsinki as QTCOM.

References

External links

*
Qt Marketplace
{{DEFAULTSORT:Qt Company Companies formerly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange Companies listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Computer companies of Finland Finnish brands Free software companies Nokia assets Qt (software) Software companies of Finland Software companies established in 1994 1994 establishments in Finland 2006 initial public offerings Companies based in Espoo