Qt developers have an unparalleled opportunity to bring their applications and work to the new BlackBerry 10 platform, Digia announced today. The BlackBerry® 10 platform uses the Qt cross-platform application and UI framework on top of a C/C++ foundation for BlackBerry Cascades™, the UI toolset for developing native applications for BlackBerry 10. Qt’s ability to enable rich application development is evident in the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK, which includes the Qt libraries in its Cascades framework.

BlackBerry Cascades supports application creation with the standard Qt development framework. Qt enables developers to create smooth transitions, velvet-like animations and graphical effects that users love. Qt developers can rapidly bring their applications to BlackBerry 10’s growing ecosystem.

Juhapekka Niemi, Director, Qt Business Operations at Digia said: “We were pleased to see the successful launch of BlackBerry 10 with a rich and robust native development environment offering. Qt delivers the best of both worlds being a cross-platform environment that supports true native applications. That means that developers who have produced apps for other platforms using Qt can migrate them to BlackBerry 10 with minimal effort and vice versa. The ability to spread software development investment across multiple platforms encourages the growth of individual software platform ecosystems by minimising development cost and risk.”

Qt is an open source framework developed and maintained by Digia (http://qt.digia.com/) and the Qt Project (http://qt-project.org/). It enables developers to realise applications and companies to create their own software ecosystems fast. Qt enables the creation of the type of rich graphics and smooth animations that smartphone users expect, as well as rigorous and complex applications with intuitive UIs. And, because the applications are native to their respective systems, they extract the maximum performance from the underlying hardware. BlackBerry is an active contributor to the Qt Project and upstreams all its Qt code contributions to the Qt repository via qt-project.org.

“BlackBerry customers are hungry for applications and we know that they demand a powerful and fluid experience,” said Christopher Smith, Vice President, Handheld Application and Platform Tools at BlackBerry. “We selected Qt because we wanted a framework that could enable us to build developer tools that inspire BlackBerry 10 developers who want powerful native tools for their apps.”

Qt is an official BlackBerry Platform Partner (https://developer.blackberry.com/devzone/develop/platform_partners/qt.html).

About Qt

Used by over 500,000 developers worldwide, Qt is a full framework that enables the development of powerful, interactive and platform-independent applications. Qt applications run native on desktop, embedded and mobile host systems, enabling them to deliver performance that is far superior to other cross-platform application development frameworks. Qt’s support for multiple platforms and operating systems allows developers to save significant time related to porting to other devices.

About Digia, Qt

Digia is responsible for all Qt activities including product development and commercial and open source licensing. Since March 2011, Digia Plc, the Helsinki-based services and consulting powerhouse listed in the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki exchange (DIG1V) has been the commercial licensor of Qt. In September 2012 Digia acquired the full Qt business from Nokia. Digia operates in China, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and USA.

Digia has in-depth Qt expertise and experience from demanding mission-critical development projects and hundreds of in-house certified Qt developers. We have helped leading industry players worldwide deploy Qt-based projects in the desktop, embedded and mobile space.

Digia’s goal is to provide desktop, embedded and mobile developers and companies with the most powerful cross-platform UI and application framework. Together with its licensing, support and services capabilities, Digia, Qt operates with the mission to work closely with developers to ensure that the projects are deployed on time, within budget and with a competitive advantage. http://qt.digia.com

BlackBerry and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Research In Motion Limited. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services.

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February 2013 Ref: DQ038/A

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