Nokia is selling its Qt software business to Digia. The move will enable the Qt product to be developed further with cross-platform support for Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.

As we predicted last week, when Nokia laid off its Australian Qt staff, Nokia is ending its involvement with Qt, passing it on to Digia, the Finnish company which took over Nokia’s Qt commercial licensing and services business last year.

The acquisition will see Nokia transfer 125 of its Qt staff from Oslo and Berlin to Digia. In addition to its base Helsinki in Finland, Digia has an office in Santa Clara, California. Nokia has been cutting back on staff with more than 10,000 employees losing their jobs worldwide. It is now concentrating on developing for Microsoft Windows Phone.

Qt5 is due for release in a few weeks, with plans for both commercial and open source licenses to be offered. Qt has been used by over 450,000 developers, and is used in products by Autodesk, Adobe, Skype, and the VLC media player.