Motorola takes 50% stake in UIQ
Published by Rafe Blandford at 16:53 BST, October 15th 2007
Sony Ericsson, Motorola and UIQ Technology today announced that Motorola has taken a 50% stake in UIQ Technology. UIQ Technology was previously wholly owned by Sony Ericsson following its purchase from Symbian earlier this year. This represents a very significant endorsement of UIQ by Motorola and underlines Motorola's plan to expand its high end multimedia portfolio using UIQ powered phones.
When Sony Ericsson originally announced its intentions to open up UIQ to outside ownership there was some skepticism, but with this announce Sony Ericsson has impressively delivered on its intentions in a relatively short time period. With joint ownership UIQ is not obviously tied to one company, in contrast to S60, which should make it more attractive to other potential licensees.
UIQ now has two of the top mobile phone manufacturers as owners which represents a very significant strength and now looks set to emerge as a significant rival to Windows Mobile, and S60 in the coming years. Compared to the apparent stagnation under Symbian ownership this is a very impressive turn round.
Motorola's Symbian story has now come full circle as it is one again a share holder in a key part of the Symbian ecosystem.
The new deal is subject to regulatory approval, but the necessary contracts have been signed, and no problems are envisioned.
At the press conference announcing the new shareholding Miles Flint, CEO of Sony Ericsson, reaffirmed Sony Ericsson's commitment to produce more high end devices based on UIQ, but also stressed that future strategy saw UIQ moving down into lower costs devices and that UIQ phones would be a substantial part of the overall portfolio of phones.
Alain Mutricy, Senior Vice President, Platforms, Motorola Mobile Devices said that UIQ would not be replacing any part of Motorola's platform strategy, but was in addition to Motorola's existing activities. UIQ will be used by Motorola in high end multimedia devices such as Motorola's existing UIQ phone, the MOTO Z8. Motorola's other major modern software platform is a Linux Java platform (called MOTOMAGX).
Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ Technology, explained that UIQ Technology has grown in the last 8 months. It has more than doubled the number of employees and opened new offices in Budapest and London. This growth is set to continue with both Motorola and Sony Ericsson continuing to invest in UIQ Technology.
All parties stressed that UIQ remained open to new shareholders and that with potential future shareholders the shareholding would continue to be diluted equally. Similarly the governing board would be split between any potential owners.
UIQ is currently seeking an independent chairman would will preside over a board made up of representatives from Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
We will bring your further information and analysis in due course.
See Also
Motorola buys into UIQ on SymbianOne by Richard Bloor
Press release extract:
Sony Ericsson and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) 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.
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.
Alain Mutricy, Senior Vice President, Platforms, Motorola Mobile Devices stated: "Motorola's investment in UIQ will enable us to bring featurecompetitive 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".
The full press release is available on the UIQ website .
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Categories: Software, Developer, Industry, Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: General, UIQ 3
News Discussion
krisse
Goodness me!
This means that every major phone maker is now an owner of a Symbian UI, or an owner of Symbian, or both.
This seems to confirm that Moto will be making Symbian UIQ handsets in the long term, not just dabbling here and there. This could make Symbian's market share even more huge, make the S60/UIQ rivalry more intense (which is good for consumers), and provide a wider selection of handsets for Symbian users.
The biggest loser here would appear to be Microsoft, which has absolutely no part to play in this drama.
jah
Is UIQ3/4 tied to Symbian? I would have thought UIQ would make UIQ OS indenpdent to increase its market penetration. Does anyone know about the technical aspects of UIQ3/4?
langdona
Yes its a bit of an about face as Motorola used to be a part owner of Symbian.
I'm always a bit cautious where Motorola are concerned they seem to flip flop between different OS's with gay abandon. So this may seem like good news but I'm not sure how committed they really are.
What I would like to see sorted out is the ownership of Symbian. Its currently as follows.
Ericsson (15.6%), Nokia (47.9%), Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%), Siemens (8.4%) and Sony Ericsson (13.1%)
As it does not seem that Panasonic or Siemens are likely to start making Symbian based phones. There ownership has to be in question or a least their commitment to the company. I can't see it happening but it would be amusing if Motorola brought back its stake in Symbian.
Guess Who
2 losers have joined their forces!
krisse
"Is UIQ3/4 tied to Symbian? I would have thought UIQ would make UIQ OS indenpdent to increase its market penetration. Does anyone know about the technical aspects of UIQ3/4?"
UIQ and S60 have no legal ties to Symbian, they could switch to another OS if they wanted to (and indeed there was a rumour of S60 doing that a couple of years ago, though of course it didn't happen). I don't know what all the technical hurdles would be though, but switching OS would mean that all the applications would have to be totally rewritten.
However, so far they've only ever been used on Symbian phones so (for the moment at least) anything which helps the sales of S60 and UIQ also helps the sales of Symbian.
luarvique
Can't easily switch underlying OS from Symbian to something else. This will require a complete rewrite of S60 (or UIQ). Simply not feasible, sorry.
krisse
"Can't easily switch underlying OS from Symbian to something else. This will require a complete rewrite of S60 (or UIQ). Simply not feasible, sorry."
I've no idea who is telling the truth because I'm not a programmer, but when S60 3rd was unveiled there were definitely some people saying that it would be easier to "detach" from the Symbian OS than previous S60 versions.
luarvique
A non-programmer (such as a mid-level marketing suit at Nokia) will tell you that it is possible. Any programmer who has spent some time figuring out Avkon and other S60 parts will say "no way".
krisse
"A non-programmer (such as a mid-level marketing suit at Nokia) will tell you that it is possible."
Why would anyone from Nokia say it was possible if it wasn't?
As far as I remember the people who suggested a move to Linux were columnists on various unofficial websites.
godeassi
Any programmer who has spent some time figuring out Avkon and other S60 parts will say "no way".
-----------------------
That's the god's honest truth right there. S60 is still very tightly coupled with Symbian OS. Symbian C++ paradigms pervade every corner of every S60 library and S60 would indeed require an almost entire rewrite to sit on top of another OS.
So, yes, it's possible, but not very practical.
rbrunner
I am one programmer more who can fully confirm what is said about UIQ and S60: They simply do not make sense without Symbian.
It's like a 10-story building (Symbian) with an additional 3 stories (UIQ or S60) built on top of it, and then the owner of the top 3 stories starts to threat the owner of the 10 stories below that if he does not behave he will go somewhere else. Of course. Happens all the time.
But I am aware that probably no number of programmers saying so will convince everybody that this is a fact. And if it serves some marketing people in whatever they try to achieve, or whoever they want to scare, or bring into line again, they will happily drop hints and start rumors that UIQ or S60 might be ported to Linux or whatever...
luarvique
Quote:
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Why would anyone from Nokia say it was possible if it wasn't?
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Suits are driven by a set of goals totally different from what the technical people see. If there is a tactical gain claiming that S60 can be ported away from Symbian, they will happily claim that, whatever technical realities are.
To be fair, technical types also have tendency to claim one or another pet technology of theirs to have miraculous economy-changing qualities it doen't really have. They just don't view the world the same way suits do.
Quote:
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As far as I remember the people who suggested a move to Linux were columnists on various unofficial websites.
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Well, website columnists do not really count as reliable sources, unless they have some extra credentials attached :)
jah
If UIQ3/4 were not designed to be OS independent then that is all I wanted to know. So UIQ3/4 can only be used with Symbian (not the case with Palm OS UI for the record).
luarvique
Quote:
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If UIQ3/4 were not designed to be OS independent then that is all I wanted to know. So UIQ3/4 can only be used with Symbian (not the case with Palm OS UI for the record).
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Yes, PalmOS is basically a set of libraries (and not a very complicated set), so it should be easily portable. I am surprised Palm
still hasn't ported it to Linux or some other OS, as their original underlying layer can't be called a real OS. But then, what would you expect from a company that for years used ARM-based hardware just to emulate the legacy 68000-based platform?
Dogmann
Hi all,
Call me cynical but i do wonder just how much cheaper Motorola could of bought their stake for after toady's Nokia announcement. Hopefully this will be the shock to the system that jump starts SE's increased performance for it's smart phone device's as Motorola are already using the same OMAP chip as Nokia whilst SE still insists on using the very out dated IMO Nexperia chip. The P3 really needs to come soon and needs to blow us away like the P910 did or i really do fear for the future of SE's smart phones.
Marc
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