This document discusses how the convergence of desktop, mobile, and web platforms is blurring the lines between devices. It describes how processing power, memory, and battery life are becoming similar across laptops, netbooks, and smartphones. It also explains how the growing capabilities of the web are forcing more common behaviors across platforms. The document then outlines how Qt can help developers by allowing them to write code for desktop, embedded, and mobile platforms using one code base, and by providing capabilities for powerful UIs, graphics, and web integration.
1. From Desktop to Web to Mobile
Thiago Macieira 13/11/09
How Qt helps you go everywhere
2. Who am I?
• Senior Product Manager at Nokia, Qt
• Degrees in Engineering and an MBA
• Almost 3 years with the company
• Focus on the Core & Infrastructure domains
• Other or past duties:
– Developer in the Core Team
– Working mostly with networking, I/O, threads
– Liaison to the KDE community
– Release manager for Qt
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4. Last year, we talked about...
• Desktop / Embedded convergence
• Focussed on the embedded ports of Qt:
– Embedded Linux (previously existing)
– Windows CE (recently released in Qt 4.4)
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5. This year, we’ll talk about...
• Desktop / Embedded / Mobile / Web convergence
• Mobile activities:
– Symbian and Maemo 5 ports
– Qt Mobility project
– Nokia
• Web activities:
– QtWebKit improvements
– Web Runtime
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6. Why should I consider this?
• Huge installed base
• Economies of scale
• Blurring definition of devices
• Leveraging the Web
• And because it’s easy with Qt
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7. PC addressable market
• Market still growing but decelerating
– CAGR 2003-2008: 14.5% 2008-2013: 5.2%
• Portable trend
– Notebooks and laptops overtook in 2008
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Source: StrategyAnalytics
8. PC market by Operating System
• Market fairly established:
– Windows clearly dominates
– Mac OS X rising in popularity
– Linux making slow inroads
• Low-cost, public sector, etc.
• Many toolkit options:
– Microsoft has several offerings
– Apple has only one official offering
– Linux has two alternatives (one of them being Qt)
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10. Mobile market by Operating System
• Smartphone market very fragmented:
– Symbian will remain the leader for the time being
– Fragmentation will increase before it decreases
• Each OS has its own toolkit
Smartphone installed base
2006 2009 2012
Others Others
7,1% 2,3%
Others Linux (incl. Android)
Linux (incl. Android)
2,5% Linux (incl. Android) 19,9%
12,1% Symbian
12,1%
35,7%
Windows Mobile Windows Mobile
12,2% 13,4% Windows Mobile
Symbian
50,1% 12,8%
Symbian
62,7% Blackberry
5,8%
Blackberry Blackberry
iPhone
13,3% 14,1%
15,3%
iPhone
8,6%
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Source: StrategyAnalytics, Jul/09
11. The Embedded market
• Varied processors and OS, but changing
• Consolidating:
– Processors: ARM and MIPS
– OS: Linux (mid and high-end)
• Hardware seriously underpowered:
– Little or no graphics acceleration
– Memory limitations
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Source: Qt Development Frameworks internal analysis
13. What is convergence?
• “Technological convergence is the tendency for
different technological systems to evolve towards
performing similar tasks.”
– Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence
• The lines of separation blur:
– Different devices do the same jobs
– Consumers start expecting the same behaviour
• Example:
– Web browsing
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14. Devices themselves are converging
• CPU, GPU and battery life are very close:
– Laptops are becoming lighter
– Netbooks are getting better battery life
• Example: Nokia 3G Booklet has 12 hours
– Mobile devices are getting more powerful:
• Example: Nokia N900 mobile computer
• Services are the differentiation
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15. Device convergence: 3-device illustration
Netbook
Asus eeePC
Atom 1.6 GHz processor
1 GB of RAM
80 GB of storage
Smartphone
Mobile Computer Laptop
Nokia N900 Dell XPS
Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz processor
ARM 400 MHz processor
2 GB of RAM
256 MB of RAM
160 GB of storage
32 GB of storage
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16. The Web is also forcing convergence
• Zero install, zero deployment
• Emerging Web technologies:
– HTML 5 / CSS 3
– Web widgets
– Web tools
• Easy access to developers
– Large pool of talent to tap onto
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17. Note of warning: web isn’t so simple
• Many standards, poor support:
– HTML 4, HTML 5, XHTML 1.x, CSS 2, CSS 3, ECMAScript
– Browser engines must cope with broken source code
– Web developers must cope with engine limitations
• Desktop landscape:
– Internet Explorer 6 still over 60%
– IT corporations block upgrades
• WebKit dominates mobile:
– Used by Nokia, Apple, Google, Palm, Research in Motion¹
– Existing 3rd-party browsers for Windows Mobile
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1) Blackberry doesn’t use WebKit yet, but it’s expected to do so soon
19. Without Qt, you’d use...
• Desktop:
– Windows: Microsoft .NET framework
– Mac: Apple’s Cocoa framework
• Mobile / Embedded:
– Symbian: Symbian C++ API
– Windows Mobile: Microsoft .NET embedded
• Web:
– HTML 5 / CSS 3 / custom JavaScript extensions
– Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight
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20. Desktop with Qt
• Traditional Qt segment
– Strongest API base
– Most customers
• Platforms supported:
– Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 (and some Server)
– Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6:
• 32- and 64-bit, PowerPC and x86
– Linux with X11
• Any platform
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21. Embedded and Mobile with Qt
• Renovated focus for Qt:
– API completeness – Qt Mobility project
– Performance, memory profiling
• Platforms supported:
– Linux with DirectFB, on ARM, MIPS, and x86
– Linux with X11, on ARM and x86
– Windows CE 5.0, 6.0, Mobile 6.0, 6.5
– Symbian 3.1, 3.2, 5.0 (and future versions)
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22. Using Qt, you have...
• One code base for all platforms
– Minor tweaks depending on form factor
• Powerful UI capabilities
– Animation Framework, QML
– New UI editor (Project “Bauhaus”)
– OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenVG
• Web integration:
– QtWebKit API
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