A new mobile revolution
With the explosive growth of mobile technologies in China, it is good to know that Qt is at the forefront of bringing rich development opportunities to a market filled with literally hundreds of millions of users. Nevertheless, a careful and considered approach is needed to avoid the risks of lock-in to any single platform that might cause longer-term stagnation. Qt's core 'write-once, run anywhere' proposition is perfectly positioned to ensure openness, flexibility and development power.
The China Mobile voice and multimedia services network, the largest of its kind in the world, is bringing its customers a popular new music client – Migu Music 2010 for desktop and mobile platforms, based on Qt.
The technology on the table
• China Mobile’s partnership with Cybercom and Qt Development Frameworks has lead to a rapid and successful product development
• A Mac OS client and a Linux desktop client have been developed based on Qt – these are already available for download http://bit.ly/bVxUtc
• A Symbian^3 preview version tailored for the coming Nokia N8 device has been released for public pre-testing and feedback.
• A MeeGo client is currently being prepared in line with the industry's next device launches.
China Mobile decided to trust Qt to support its multi-platform offering. Qt was well suited to this task without compromising on the robustness of application, while at the same time bringing a consistent high-quality user experience.
QtWebKit for "famous" web services
On the desktop side, Qt's rapid development functionality and rich-UI feature set has allowed China Mobile to construct a multi-feature user-friendly music application with features including like lyrics and changeable skins. This project also saw the use of the QtWebKit open source web browser engine to enable integration with China Mobile’s famous interactive web services such as, “Ringtones Download” and “Music Ranking System”.
Symbian and beyond!
Qt has also acted as the essential tool for the application to be moved in a very short time to a second desktop OS platform and to mobile platforms. The first destination here will be the Symbian platform - and further platforms will be delivered when needed as a result of Qt's cross platform capabilities.
A great development experience
Positive personal experience with Qt from the group behind the development team from China Mobile Wireless Music R&D Center has been an important factor in the project's success. In particular, they were very pleased to be able to bring new touch experiences and a rich animated user interface to this new music client for mobile platforms.
The road ahead keeps on rocking!
Looking forward, the team is excited about being able to bring this application to new platforms and devices, helping them to serve a larger number of customers – and of course the chance to improve musical enjoyment for millions of Chinese music fans all around the country!
