Trolltech says the emergence of Linux on developer and user desktops helped make 2004 a banner year for Qt, its cross-platform development framework. Qt provides a C++ API, along with compile-time translation software that lets developers build native applications for a variety of platforms from the same code base.

According to Trolltech, Qt sales grew 40 percent in 2004, with 3,000 companies developing commercial applications around the framework. New Qt applications included Skype, a P2P (peer-to-peer) VoIP (voice-over-IP) client that was released initially for Windows, before being released under Linux a few months later.

Qt can run on Windows or Linux development hosts, with Windows still the most popular, Trolltech says. However, the company notes that a survey of 1,300 customers found Linux to be growing in popularity as a development host for new product developments.

Trolltech CEO Eirik Chambe-Eng said, “With the growing requirement to develop for multiple desktop platforms, such as both Windows and Linux, we see the market need for Qt continuing to increase.”

Trolltech also markets an embedded version of Qt, called Qt/Embedded, which Motorola uses in its Linux smartphones. Both Qt and Qt/Embedded are available under commercial and open source licenses.

 
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