According to a newspaper report, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia plans to equip future high-performance phones with the Maemo operating system. The report (German language link) in the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD), says the company is expected to launch its first Maemo smartphone within the next few weeks.

NOKIA HAS CREATED a port for the Qt cross-platform framework to Maemo 5 in a bid to help developers create applications for the N900.

The open source Maemo platform, which is used on Nokia's Internet Tablet devices, will soon support Trolltech's Qt development toolkit.

Users who have bought Nokia's flagship smartphone, the Maemo-based N900, won't be able to upgrade the device to MeeGo, Nokia said in a blog post. The MeeGo OS, merges Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo Linux-based operating systems.

After a delay of several weeks, Nokia is finally shipping its Maemo Linux-based N900 smartphone for 500 Euros ($750), says eWEEK. Meanwhile, a research note supports rumors of an upcoming Maemo-based, mass-market smartphone designed to compete directly with the iPhone, says an industry report, and LWN.net reports on last month's Maemo Summit.

Nokia, which sponsors the open source Maemo project, in June formed an alliance with the Intel-sponsored Moblin project. Thus, Moblin technology could also see use in forthcoming Nokia phones based on Maemo.

Nokia will introduce Qt to the maemo platform in addition to GTK+. The plan is in the earliest stage and recruitment offers for Qt/C++ developers will pop up soon. Don't expect any Qt application developed by Nokia for the tablets anytime soon, though. The first actual step will be the distribution of the Qt libraries for application development in maemo.org during 4Q2008.

Photos of Nokia's upcoming Maemo 5 device have been leaked, and they reveal that it is likely a smartphone and not just a tablet. The device reflects Nokia's growing commitment to Linux.

Intel and Nokia are merging their open source Linux operating systems to create a MeeGo OS, designed for mobile devices ranging from handhelds to netbooks. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, MeeGo builds upon the core from the Intel-backed Moblin technology and adds Nokia's Maemo middleware elements, as well as Nokia's Qt application framework.