Nokia, the giant mobile phone maker based in Finland has purchased Trolltech, a Norwegian software company for $153.3 million.

Trolltech, formerly known as Quasar Technologies is a computer software company from Oslo, Norway. They are best known for their flagship product which is Qt, a multi-platform C++ Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) framework which also includes packages such as data structures and a networking library. The popular KDE desktop used in Linux is built using the Qt library. Trolltech’s product is also used by other popular softwares like Skype, Google Earth and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements.

The acquisition is a good news for all Linux and Open-Source enthusiasts since we can look forward to better cell phones and devices from Nokia using a slick user interface powered by the Qt library.

You can read the press release from Trolltech’s website and the joint statement (PDF) by Nokia and Trolltech CEOs to the KDE and Open-Source community.

I’m pretty sure that the acquisition is Nokia’s answer to Google’s Project Android.

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