07-11-2006, 09:10 AM
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Ye Olde Administratorium
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BREAKING NEWS: Sony Ericsson to Accquire UIQ
In an interesting strategic move, Sony Ericsson will be purchasing the UIQ branch of Symbian and bringing it into the fold "as a seperate business subsidiary [of SE with the current] Management team." This now places the two main user interfaces under the complete control of the main manufacturer that uses them (Nokia and S60, SE and UIQ) and will allow UIQ to recieve funding directly from their new parent company. More on this throughout the day. For now, the full press release follows.
Read on in the full article.
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07-11-2006, 09:16 AM
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Didn't Sony Ericsson originally own UIQ in the first place?
It's probably a good move though and shows SE's commitment to the UI.
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07-11-2006, 09:26 AM
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Sony Ericsson owns Symbian along with Nokia and the other partners, who owned UIQ, so I guess they always partially owned it.
What I don't understand is what exactly they've bought and why. Could this mean UIQ being used on top of other OSes for example?
Still, whatever happens it shows SE is definitely committed to UIQ.
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07-11-2006, 10:31 AM
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Interesting move. I too don't see quite what the point of it is, unless SE are going to leverage their ownership of UIQ to make sure the interface develops along the lines they want, rather than what any other licensee may want.
It's nice to note that the press release states that UIQ will still be open to all licensees on an equal basis - that should keep Moto, BenQ etc. happy. (actually, are either of those two still making UIQ phones?)
Edit: Just had another thought - what's going on here is that SE is doing a Nokia... Nokia own S60 (S80 & S90) and license them to other companies - SE buying UIQ puts them in the same position, and possibly more importantly, it puts Symbian back to being an OS company rather than partly OS partly GUI company. Certainly does show SE's commitment to UIQ though... I wouldn't be suprised if there's now a raft of anouncements of new SE UIQ phones.
Last edited by stuclark; 07-11-2006 at 10:35 AM.
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07-11-2006, 11:05 AM
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Price about $66 millions
Price about $66 millions according to rumours at
http://what.se/article.asp?id=4736
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07-11-2006, 11:21 AM
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So looks like the rumour of 6 UIQ devices in development at SE are probably close to the mark...so we should see more and more Smartphones from SE, perhaps the successor to the K800i will use UIQ...we live in interesting times...
Last edited by jah; 07-11-2006 at 02:15 PM.
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07-11-2006, 11:23 AM
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If there is a huge burst of new UIQ phones, that would be excellent news for Symbian, it would be bound to increase its market share even further.
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07-11-2006, 11:57 AM
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Licensing fees?
What was price of a UIQ license for a phone? 1.5-2 USD?
My rough sums imply that SE must be intending to sell at least 10-15 million UIQ handsets a year for this deal to make hard commercial sense. That certainly implies they're looking to use UIQ3 in their mainstream phones.
Wishful thinking on my part? I hope not.
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07-11-2006, 01:31 PM
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"Wishful thinking on my part? I hope not."
They already recently used UIQ in one of their Walkman phones, that's arguably the most mainstream Symbian model released so far if you consider the brand it was under. I wouldn't be surprised if SE did start using UIQ more widely.
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07-11-2006, 02:05 PM
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by stuclark
Interesting move. I too don't see quite what the point of it is, unless SE are going to leverage their ownership of UIQ to make sure the interface develops along the lines they want, rather than what any other licensee may want.
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Symbian is (effectively) owned by Nokia. I can imagine the UIQ team might be having all sorts of problems obtaining funding for the development of UIQ. By purchasing the comapany, SE can ensure that whatever funding it sees fit is made available to develop the UI. You never know, they might even get within six months of a release date! 
__________________
Bassey
You look like you want to go away, But I know you’re gonna stay. For although your heart is in L.A, Your head is in my fridge. There’s flowers in your hair, they're not real their made of silk. There’s a note in your mouth, to remind me to get milk.
Wot Italian? from Boothby Graffoe
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07-11-2006, 02:22 PM
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"Symbian is (effectively) owned by Nokia. "
A lot of people say this, but is it really true?
Nokia only has a minority stake in Symbian, even if it is by far the largest shareholder. They tried to take a majority stake in Symbian when Psion sold their shares, but the other owners of Symbian prevented the sale taking place as it violated the terms of the agreement under which they all set up Symbian in the first place.
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07-11-2006, 02:43 PM
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According to Symbian, their shareholders are: Ericsson (15.6%), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens (8.4%) and Sony Ericsson (13.1%) - so yes, Nokia does have a controlling interest in terms of percentages.
The Symbian licensees are currently: Arima (UIQ), Ben Q (UIQ), Fujitsu (FOMA), Lenovo (UIQ), LG Electronics (S60), Motorola (UIQ), Mitsubishi (FOMA), Nokia (S60 (S80 S90)), Panasonic (S60), Samsung (S60), Sharp (FOMA) and Sony Ericsson (UIQ).
That makes (unless I've got something wrong) 4 S60 licensees, 5 UIQ licensees and 3 FOMA licensees.
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07-11-2006, 02:55 PM
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It might be a good move for SE but i'm not sure about the effect that this will have to the symbian ecosystem in general. One of the main problem of Symbian at the moment is the very limited number of manufacturers actually using it. Nokia is doing S60 phones, SE UIQ phones and that's about it. Previous attempts from other manufacturers to use Symbian have all pretty much failed. LG and Samsung are trying once again, we'll see what's going to happen.
But if i wanted tomorrow to build a phone running UIQ, the aquisition of UIQ by SE means that i would need to buy a license from SE to do that. In other words, for each handset that i would sell, i would have to reverse part of my profit to my main competitor. Not that encouraging, is it?
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07-11-2006, 03:24 PM
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[duplicate post, sorry]
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07-11-2006, 03:48 PM
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I don't see a difference between SE licensing UIQ to other phone manufacturers, and to Nokia licensing Avkon to other phone manufacturers.
And as long as the licensing terms don't change, there is little difference between paying a license fee to SE as compared to paying the same license fee to UIQ.
Besides, why would it be a problem that a limited number of manufacturers are using Symbian OS? If anything, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Linux are not exactly used by huge numbers of smartphone manufacturers, I would say.
If there's a smartphone OS having a problem, it would be Palm OS. It's sole licensee has started using Windows Mobile.
Sander van der Wal
www.mBrainSoftware.com
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