Previously a part of Nokia and now aligned under a new eponymously-named corporate umbrella, User Interface (UI)-focused software development specialist Qt Group has launched Qt Accelerate. Described as an “express-lane solution” to building applications and digital products for use cases in industrial manufacturing, mobility, consumer electronics and more, the Qt (pronounced “cute”) technology offers pre-designed, industry-tailored templates for customisable software-defined products.
In terms of use and usability, Qt Accelerate offers software application development professionals the ability to select packages of pre-designed templates that the company promises are “quality-assured” for live deployment use.
Tempting & tremendous testing
Users can customise UI/UX components to suit branding needs and then deploy them across a range of supported entry-level and premium hardware with little to no custom code. The company says that Qt Accelerate is ideal for software teams that need to quickly convey proof-of-concepts or products for faster time-to-market. Products can even be tested in the cloud, without hardware.
This – says Qt Group – gives organisations of all sizes a quick and cost-effective start on digital product development, regardless of time constraints or expertise in coding, hardware and design.
“Qt Accelerate is about empowering creators to turn ideas into innovative products in days, no matter the time or resource constraints,” says Petteri Holländer, senior vice president of ventures at Qt Group. “Sometimes you need a quick start, whether you’re a large enterprise or a startup, since building a software-defined product from scratch can be an involved process. It takes coding, designing, deciding which software and hardware to use, etc. With Qt Accelerate, you don’t have to start from scratch or hire a full engineering team before you have a working product to trial. You get a starting point that’s 90 percent complete and risk-free because it’s quality-assured from the ground up. After just one week of customization, you are easily looking at a version 1.0 product launch.”
While no prior knowledge of Qt Framework is needed for Qt Accelerate, the templates enjoy the same flexibility, stability, performance and quality as Qt Framework – they can be expanded upon and scaled to other devices.
What is a companion app service?
Qt Accelerate also supports extensions for users to enrich products with what the company calls “companion app services” i.e. functions such as real-time analytics, over-the-air updates etc. The template solutions are developed with quality assurance in mind and with consideration for the requirements of the Cyber Resilience Act, enabling Qt Accelerate and its customers to work towards building compliant and reliable devices.
The software toolset here has already been trialed by various mobility customers, such as electric vehicles company Clean Motion and electric hydrofoiling boat manufacturer Foilone.
“The templates and base functionality in Qt Accelerate allow us to quickly tweak and iterate. It’s a ready-made backbone that can be customised to match our needs.” says Mathias Heinonen, CEO, Foilone. “We don’t have any user interface experience in-house, so having a partner who could bring us a ready plan, take our feedback and implement it so seamlessly without compromising was incredibly valuable.”
Qt Accelerate is designed to support many industrial and consumer electronics use cases, with more to be supported in the future.
Although Qt, then the Qt Company and now the Qt Group might have gone through various operational iterations throughout its history (the technology itself stems back to Trolltech with its cross platform software tools and libraries as they stood in the day if your memory goes back that far), the software engineering team here can draw on some rich history in terms of being among the first to perfect “pinch & zoom” and “two finger on screen” UI functionalities among other advancements, what the firm does now in the post-low-code low-code era remains to be seen, but this is part of that story.