Sony Ericsson to Acquire UIQ
The big news today is that Sony Ericsson is to acquire UIQ, a subsidiary of Symbian. So what might this mean for developers?
I see this as a endorsement of UIQ by Sony Ericsson and a further commitment to this platform. I commented on Sony Ericsson’s strong commitment last February. While Sony Ericsson will undoubtedly be creating more UIQ 3.0 based phones, some might question whether the acquisition will attract or dissuade further UIQ 3.0 licensees. The press release says…
"UIQ on Symbian OS will continue to be openly available, licensed on equal terms to all its licensees"
Hence, Sony Ericsson hope to license UIQ in the same way that Nokia License S60 to other phone OEMs. Why would other OEMs do this? I wondered this of LG and Samsung after the Smartphone show. Since then I have learnt that Samsung prides itself with its fast phone development. It aims to hit the market with the latest S60 releases before Nokia themselves can release their own phones based on a given S60 release. If they manage to do this their phones will have more features and gain a share of the large S60 smartphone market. Also, with network operators starting to standardise on platforms that can be easily customised, it makes sense for LG and Samsung to take advantage of this. Whether licensing UIQ rather than S60 also presents these opportunities remains to be seen.
From Symbian’s side, it could be said that it can now concentrate on the core OS. However, I don’t think UIQ was much of a distraction anyway. UIQ Technology AB is a separate business unit in a different country. It could also be said that Symbian can now treat UIQ and S60 equally. However, in practice, the higher volume customer (S60) has historically had more say as to what goes into the Symbian OS.
In terms of development, I don’t see much changing. The press release says…
"UIQ Technology will operate as a separate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson under its current management team."
Hence, I expect the excellent information and support to continue to be made available at developer.uiq.com.
UIQ Technology AB evolved from the sale of Ericsson Mobile Applications Lab in 1999. Hence, the subsidiary is actually being passed back to similar owners.
