Sony Ericsson will sell half of its UIQ unit to Motorola
15 October 2007 by Olav Hellesø-Knutsen Updated! Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB will sell half of its UIQ software licensing unit to Motorola. Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson and Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ will host an international press conference announcing a strategic business update for UIQ today at 2:00pm BST time. It is expected that it will be announced that sell 50% of the company to Motorola. Following Sony Ericssonss acquisition of the Swedish software company from Symbian Ltd on 2nd February, there has been significant progress with regards to UIQ technology, handsets and licensing. Monday's announcement will further enhance the strength of UIQ as highly competitive and independent cross-vendor user interface platform for business and multimedia feature phones.
Update with press release: Sony Ericsson and Motorola, today announced a definitive agreement under which Motorola will acquire a 50% interest in UI Holdings BV, the parent company of UIQ Technology AB, which is currently wholly owned by Sony Ericsson. Under the agreement, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will work together and jointly invest in the development of the UIQ open user interface platform. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. As previously announced, Sony Ericsson acquired UIQ Technology from Symbian Ltd in February 2007. UIQ Technology licenses the UIQ open user interface and development platform to mobile phone vendors around the world. Motorola and Sony Ericsson are committed to further advancing UIQ as a strong, independent cross-vendor user interface for smartphones and media-centric phones. Today's announcement should be seen as an invitation to other mobile device vendors to participate in the UIQ community, either as shareholders or licensees. Motorola and Sony Ericsson also plan to significantly increase their cooperation and support for the UIQ developer program. More details will be unveiled to developers at a special event today following a media and analyst briefing. Both companies have agreed that UIQ will be vendor and chipset independent. In addition, UIQ will be licensed on equal terms to all mobile device vendors in the industry. Sony Ericsson and Motorola are committed to expanding the shareholder base of UI Holdings to include other handset vendors. Sony Ericsson and Motorola each have been UIQ licensees for many years and have launched several successful Symbian/UIQ based products including, the Sony Ericsson P1 smartphone, the new W960 Walkman® phone and the Motorola MOTO Z8. UIQ, offered the industry's first touch-screen interface back in 2002, and now supports both QWERTY and classic numerical keyboard configurations as well as finger touch data input. UIQ's single code base greatly simplifies customization for handset vendors, operators and third-party developers. Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, said "This is an important transaction that demonstrates the increasing importance of open operating systems for all handset vendors. By working together in a strong, mutually beneficial partnership, hand-set vendors can reduce development costs and help operators launch more consistent services with greater efficiency. At the same time, service providers and applications developers benefit from a more robust environment to create compelling end-to-end solutions which benefit consumers by enabling a more personalized user-experience". Alain Mutricy, Senior Vice President, Platforms, Motorola Mobile Devices stated: "Motorola's investment in UIQ will enable us to bring feature-competitive multimedia devices to market. Its flexibility will enable us to bring devices to market that meet regional preferences or specific operator customisation requirements. We look forward to working closely with our partners, Sony Ericsson and UIQ." Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ Technology, said, "We are extremely excited to be working closely with Motorola and Sony Ericsson, two well-established industry leaders. UIQ offers a truly personal and rich user experience plus important flexibility for developers, operators and phone vendors as it supports many form factors in one code base. UIQ has benefited greatly from our partnership with Sony Ericsson and we are confident that Motorola's interest will create new and important growth opportunities for UIQ, our customers, employees and consumers around the world" Motorola's investment in UI Holdings BV is subject to customary regulatory approval and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Sony Ericsson and Motorola confirmed their aim is to further expand ownership of UIQ in the future and hope to make further announcements about new shareholders and licensees in due course.
Comments On 6 Nov 16:18 decon wrote About time too. My P1i shows that SE have fixed the mess that the P-series was in, in terms of software stability regarding the future of UIQ3, but one phone does not make a platform. Moto's Z8 and Z10 are a step in teh right direction, hopefully SE will be brave enough to stick UIQ3 in the successors to the W910i and K850i. There are still lingering issues regarding the touchscreen implementation of UIQ3, i.e. inconsistent/weird interfaces, looking at how different the controls are on the P1i, P990i and W960i. SE and Moto can chase S60v3 phones if they flood the market with non-touchscreen UIQ3 phones. On 3 Nov 11:50 RobertChasmer wrote Theres several big problems with UIQ3 (used in the P990) compared to UIQ2 (Used in the P900/910). UIQ3 at least how its implemented on the P990, only allows signed applications to run. Theres now, "do you want to allow this unsigned app to install or run stuff". This means *small* developers can't create applications/games/utilities, and then distribute them. They have to go through sony for certification. End result, now decent apps for UIQ3. I had loads of great games, demos, productivity tools, utils on the P910. What do I have on the P990 nothing but the built in RSS reader Reliability is the key one, with memory leaks galore. Unable to fix this they just stuck a whole load more memory in the P1i to make it take longer for the memory to be wasted. Regular apps crashing, even the UIQ3 interface to be seemed like a backwards step when compared to that of UIQ2 in the P910. On 28 Oct 18:39 blojo wrote M600 was a big disappointment. reading sms and email is a huge task which takes too many clicks and waiting. come on sony. get with the program or the iphone will overtake your market share. On 27 Oct 10:51 Harshula wrote Ive been using the W810i for abt 1 1/2 mths, and being a big SE fan frm the start, i personally think that the unity among these two powerful companies is fantastic! Work hard SE and Motorola! Im lookin fwrd 2 seeing more great works of art frm u 2! On 24 Oct 16:00 kelly wrote I read the review of the W960i on both gsmarena and mobile review it was devasting the W960i didn't worth the praises as it seems.W960i was supposed to be the flagship walkman phone but from all indication,W910i is.i am bigining to doubt SE competence on UIQ.A flagship shouldn't be made with that cheap plastic material yet it is an expensive phone,they want to make money out of nothing,i remember an early publication,according to writer he said main loking at the W960i you just know that it ment buisness,but the reverse is the case here.SE is loosing their leadership in music phones. On 19 Oct 15:23 me wrote It's good to see UIQ platform being used in more phone brands unlike Symbian Series 60 etc. which is exclusive only ti Nokias... I just hope there would be full comatibility between these UIQ products when it comes to software/applications... On 19 Oct 14:55 ahsdl wrote no one is a looser. if they were looser they should have gone long time ago. On 18 Oct 19:59 Shio wrote No point of having uiq, because nokia will start making touch screen symbian based mobile phones, that will kick out se's uiq for sure :] although I am a se fan, I try to realise the sad true.. On 17 Oct 15:48 wild wrote SE rulzz and SE can do it alone but they want 2 help lower or less beneficial businesses like Motorolla , but i guess SE would work better without Motorolla On 17 Oct 05:49 korbindallis wrote I think it makes business sense, UIQ is an investment and if you’re getting revenue for your investment in terms of a partner "Motorola" then so be it :) On 15 Oct 19:43 GuessWho wrote Motorola and SonyEricsson: 2 losers have joined their forces! On 15 Oct 19:36 prom1 wrote BAD NEWS! Motorola only has a limited interest with UIQ platform only NOW because it suits their needs - low revenues (LOSS) for 2qtrs now or more. They almost completely LEFT UIQ 3 yrs ago and only now with the Z8/10 due to M$ smartphones not selling well in Europe. They want a foothold. Issue with Motorola is that they usually find an interest and if it isn't the HOTTEST item in less than 6mths they ignore it. Motorola shouldn't be re-hashing RAZR type designs & spending money on UIQ as an investment ventor instead of just licensing. They SHOULD be designing NEW phones that DON'T look like RAZR/2. Good for SE is less costs this financial yr for investment but control and direction issues will arrise with Morotola making HALF controlling decision. On 15 Oct 17:15 slead wrote I have a M600i but to be honest... I expected a lot more from a "smartphone"... what bothers me most is the speed of it, its so damn slow in the menu, opening messages... and I dont even have anything installed on it and even the memory card is still the default one, the 64mb... it just sucks sometimes to have a phone that is so slow... well, I am a SE fan otherwise I would not stay with it! On 15 Oct 16:33 Boinng wrote You're missing the point - SE *shouldn't* be doing it alone. If UIQ is to survive, it has to be seen as an open platform, with as many devices as possible using it, from as many manufacturers as possible. Today's announcement is great news if it means there are at least two big names supporting it. On 15 Oct 15:01 metallic wrote "Following Sony Ericssonss acquisition of the Swedish software company from Symbian Ltd .....there has been significant progress with regards to(1) UIQ technology,(2)handsets and(3) licensing." 1)UIQ 3 is not a fraction as stable as UIQ2...any UIQ 3 user who has used a UIQ 2 phone can tell that, 2)All the handsets so far released has some sort of problem of the other..even P1i 3)Its been more than a year since the P990 was launched and almost 2 years since UIQ3 came up...still theres not much software out there.They haven't opened up enough for the Software developers. I feel this sell off is a Act of desperation.SE can't do it alone. |
UIQ technology is used in mobile phones from Sony Ericsson, Motorola, BenQ and Arima.
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