Nokia completed the acquisition of Qt's parent company, Trolltech, in June this year, and many developers have been waiting to see what the next step would be. Some of the more fantastic ideas included Nokia dumping Symbian OS and powering s60 with Qt as a whole, but I think that their commitment to the Symbian Foundation puts paid to that line of thought. Qt itself already runs on X Window based Linux systems, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows CE, and features a number of technologies on top of a standard C++ based framework that allows programmers to code with ease. By adding Qt to S60, there are now some 80 million more Qt enabled devices for developers to target.
Getting programmers into the S60 platform is going to be a good side effect of Nokia implementing Qt into their eco-system. The announced goal on the purchase of Trolltech was to allow the technology to help “enable the acceleration of their cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to develop its Internet services business.” Hopefully this will lead to some consolidation in the numerous PC applications Nokia have available, and open up support for Linux and Apple computers.