LG Electronics (LG) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with The Qt Company, the Finnish-based software developer behind the Qt Project, to expand its existing collaboration on webOS. The expanded partnership will focus on embedding LG’s open source webOS platform in future automotive, robotics and smart home devices as well as positioning webOS as a reference operation system of Qt.
The partnership will guarantee more efficient management of resources required to port Qt and minimize gaps between Qt and webOS, leading to the best user experience for AI and IoT customers. With Q’s expertise in user experience (UX) and LG’s knowledge of products, the collaboration will create a powerful development environment for developers, engineers and designers to create innovative and immersive apps and devices.
“Our vision to create highly innovative, AI-powered and content-ready smart embedded devices using the webOS platform is more attainable with Qt as a partner,” said Dr. I.P. Park, president and CTO of LG Electronics. “Designing and developing these extremely complex systems requires more advanced software development capabilities than ever before and close collaboration between hardware and software experts is the foundation of this collaboration with Qt.”
Qt is a software tool for developing Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) to deliver intuitive and modern UI/UX design and powerful touch functions in consumer and automotive devices. Since 2014, LG has relied on the application development framework of Qt to provide an intuitive and easy user experience for smart TVs and information displays running webOS. Qt will also play a key role in the development of webOS Auto, planned for deployment in future automotive infotainment systems.
“LG has been a consumer electronics leader for generations, which is one of the many reasons they’ve become such a trusted partner of Qt,” said Juha Varelius, CEO of Qt. “With its initiative to expand the reach of webOS into rapidly-growing markets, LG is underscoring the massive potential of Qt-enabled connected experiences. By collaborating with LG on this initiative, we’re able to make it easy as possible for our customers to build devices that bring a new definition to the word ‘smart’.”
