Finish-based software company Digia has signed an agreement to acquire Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia.

Following the acquisition Digia becomes responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.

The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.

One of Digia?s key objectives with this acquisition is to improve its position within the Qt ecosystem by further strengthening Qt?s R&D capabilities and expanding its reach on many more platforms than ever before. Digia acquired the Qt Commercial licensing business from Nokia in March 2011, and says the operation has been successful and has grown substantially. In the following years, Digia forecasts the Qt business to grow. As part of the transaction, a maximum of 125 Qt people from Nokia will transfer to Digia, mostly based in Oslo, Norway and Berlin, Germany.

Digia plans to work with ecosystem members to secure a successful release of Qt5 and is committed to continuing the Qt Project in order to maintain Qt?s availability under both open source and commercial licenses.

"We are looking forward to welcoming the Qt team to Digia. By adding this world class organization to our existing team we plan to build the next generation leading cross-platform development environment." said Tommi Laitinen, SVP, International Products, Digia. "Now is a good time for everyone to revisit their perception of Qt. Digia's targeted R&D investments will bring back focus on Qt?s desktop and embedded platform support, while widening the support for mobile operating systems."

"Nokia is proud of the contributions we've made to Qt over the past four years. We are pleased that we've been able to work with Digia to secure continued development of Qt by the current core team," said Sebastian Nystom, head of Nokia Strategy. "Digia's plans to acquire Qt mean that it can continue as a successful open source project and also offer continuing employment for many people in the community."