Developers have been a key component of Nokia's ecosystem since the first Symbian product launched nearly a decade ago. In the time since then, Symbian has risen to power the majority of the world's smartphones, in no part due to the creativity and resourcefulness of you, the developers of mobile applications.

Here at Forum Nokia, our goal has been and remains to empower you to create compelling and original applications for Nokia's mobile telephones and computers. In the last decade we've offered developer solutions to you for Symbian, Series 40 in Java, Series 60, Maemo (now MeeGo) and Qt. Along the way, as we supported freedom of choice, we've occasionally inadvertently added to the number of platforms you must manage when developing for the diverse array of mobile devices on the market today.

All of that has changed now with Qt. With Qt, Nokia promises that you need to write your application once, using Qt—Qt's libraries, C++, and Qt Meta-object Language (QML) if you choose—and target your application to all of Nokia's smartphones and mobile computers running Symbian or MeeGo. Understanding that many of you have existing or new applications written using HTML5, we also support an HTML5-compliant mobile browser to support the latest web applications running within the browser, giving you another path to your customers.

When Daniel and Ray approached Forum Nokia about a book on cross-platform software development for Nokia products, I knew immediately that the project would be a success, because the book was to meet your needs by sharing Nokia's developer story with you. Their past experience with Nokia's platforms—"eating our own dog food" as they developed solutions internally using the same tools you use—guarantees that they can answer your questions about the challenges you face in bringing your application ideas to reality on Nokia's platforms.

I can't wait to see what you create using Qt and HTML5.

Purnima Kochikar

Vice President, Forum Nokia & Developer Community