Openwave Systems  and Trolltech announced an agreement to port Openwave client software onto Trolltech's Qtopia Phone Edition Series 4. The Openwave technologies include the Openwave Mobile Browser, Mercury Edition and Openwave Mobile Integrated Dynamic Application System (MIDAS), a user experience engine.

Openwave's latest client products will be offered to handset manufacturers on the Qtopia platform, offering the ability to quickly deploy dynamic, Internet-enabled devices on the leading Linux-based application platform. Qtopia is an application platform for efficiently building virtually any type of Linux-based device, accelerating development across device types.

"Carriers are increasingly looking to open platform devices to help them decrease time-to-market for new handsets and to create innovative applications," said Benoit Schillings, CTO, Trolltech. "As the functionality and complexity of mass market phones expands, Trolltech's open family of products provides handset manufacturers with the freedom to easily customize the user experience."

 "The benefits of open source handsets are twofold -- not only do they enable the latest handsets to get to market faster, they make it much easier for application developers to port new capabilities across a wide array of devices," said Olivier Bartholot, head of the client business unit, Openwave. "We are closely aligned with Trolltech in our shared commitment to open source innovation. Trolltech's Qtopia platform, coupled with Openwave's MIDAS engine and Mercury edition browser, provides carriers, handset manufacturers and developers an unparalleled amount of freedom to create and customize the user experience."

Together, the Openwave Mobile Browser, Mercury Edition and Openwave MIDAS user experience engine comprise the Openwave Mobile Phone Suite. MIDAS enables the creation, customization and deployment of powerful new applications and interfaces for mass market mobile phones. Openwave's high performance Mobile Browser, Mercury Edition is designed to produce the industry's fastest performance, enabling access to rich Web content and services. It is script-enabled and AJAX capable and offers wide screen, map, and zoom display modes that greatly improve web page readability.