UIQ Technology puts remaining staff on notice
Published by Rafe Blandford at 15:06 GMT, November 7th 2008
With Sony Ericsson's and Motorola's decision to stop using the UIQ platform in future products the long term future of UIQ Technology, the company behind the platform, was thrown into doubt. As things currently stand the long term future of the company is not secure. As a result, yesterday, its remaining 270 employees were put on notice of dismissal. However Sony Ericsson has agreed to continue funding the company on a by month by month basis in order to allow the company to investigate options for the future.
Following on from a board meeting on Wednesday the staff were given the news on Thursday. Originally it was feared that the UIQ Technology's activities might have to cease with immediate effect, but Sony Ericsson is allowing for a transition period. Motorola, UIQ Technology's other share holder is not involved.
Sony Ericsson has made no specific commitment to the time for which it will continue to fund UIQ Technology, but it is likely to be only long enough to explore realistic options for the future. These may include acquisition by a third party (in whole or in part) or internal projects leading to restructuring of the company. There are also plans to assist staff in future endeavours; both those seeking new employment with existing companies and those who wish to start their own companies.
The people making up UIQ are a very valuable asset and have a great deal of experience and specialist expertise both collectively and individually. Given the relative shortage of experienced engineers in the Symbian ecosystem this could be a good opportunity for companies looking for people with expertise in usability design and software development.
UIQ Technology's offices are part of Ronneby's Soft Center, an ITC focused business park and incubator associated with the local technical university. It seems reasonable that several start ups could emerge from UIQ Technology.
This news essentially heralds the end point of the UIQ platform. While it was, perhaps, an inevitable result of the formation Symbian Foundation, it has concluded with a somewhat surprising degree of speed. Both Sony Ericsson and Motorola have dropped a number of UIQ phones that were in development with anticipated release dates in 2008 and 2009.
We'll be reflecting on the story of UIQ in more detail in a future article.
Sources: UIQ Technology, BLT.se
Categories: Developer, Industry, Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: UIQ 3
News Discussion
But what surprises me is that there will be no more new UIQ3 phones reaching the market, not a single one. Both SE and Motorola had several UIQ3 phones in the development pipeline, some of them probably only a few months away from release, and both companies obviously decided to drop them all.
Why? Never mind Motorola which is a basket case anyway, but SE said they will stay with Symbian and switch to the new Foundation Symbian. As I see it, this will lead to a quite a long time without any new Symbian smartphone from SE. Why not fill this time with one or two new models, just to keep oneself in the focus of the public as a serious smartphone builder?
Does SE consider a long period without release of any new model the lesser evil than bringing almost fully-developped UIQ3 phones to market still? Is UIQ3 really that bad, at least in the eyes of SE? Or is there another reason, like totally strained developer resources, so that any further UIQ3 work, even in moderate amounts, would jeopardize the move to S60?
Or maybe this simply means that not quite the right people for the job at hand are managing SE...
| Or maybe this simply means that not quite the right people for the job at hand are managing SE... |
UIQ's bad luck comes from the Motorola and Sony who didn't have clue about how smart phones should be, how much a work needed on COMPUTER side to make a smart phone a competitor.
I have used/installed both Motorola and Sony suites. Especially Sony one, what is actually there in that gigantic download and 2 step install?!
Lets not forget, Nokia seems to have woke up lately but they have nothing on OS X/Mac scene too coming from Sony or Motorola. They didn't even spare time to submit existing software to Apple downloads or Versiontracker. Most Mac users could be shocked that there is actually UIQ3 themes creator on OS X. It is hidden in some developer page on uiq site.
All About Symbian and other sites should start archiving UIQ3 site/downloads daily so community will have access to downloads just in case.
The "touch" was UIQ, plugging touch to S60 won't cut it BTW. What a waste of technical art it is...
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Originally Posted by rbrunner
I understand that UIQ clearly has no long-term future, and that this means sooner or later there will be no more need for UIQ as a company.
But what surprises me is that there will be no more new UIQ3 phones reaching the market, not a single one. Both SE and Motorola had several UIQ3 phones in the development pipeline, some of them probably only a few months away from release, and both companies obviously decided to drop them all. Why? Never mind Motorola which is a basket case anyway, but SE said they will stay with Symbian and switch to the new Foundation Symbian. As I see it, this will lead to a quite a long time without any new Symbian smartphone from SE. Why not fill this time with one or two new models, just to keep oneself in the focus of the public as a serious smartphone builder? Does SE consider a long period without release of any new model the lesser evil than bringing almost fully-developped UIQ3 phones to market still? Is UIQ3 really that bad, at least in the eyes of SE? Or is there another reason, like totally strained developer resources, so that any further UIQ3 work, even in moderate amounts, would jeopardize the move to S60? Or maybe this simply means that not quite the right people for the job at hand are managing SE... |
Let SE do "walkman" thing, the dumb music player phone and Motorola do "state of art design" thing. Both companies made it clear with their recent decisions.
If I buy Symbian after all of these news, it would be a Nokia/Business one. In fact, Nokia could handle the UIQ too, they are just too busy with fantasy stuff right now. Remember 3dfx? It could be like 3dfx. Buy the intellectual property and hire the staff. Did you notice the amazing jump in NVidia quality/tech after 3dfx operation?
It is just not cost effective for Motorola, SE, Samsung, LG and other handset manufacturers to focus on too many OS. They have to give up some OS and it seems that Symbian is the casualty so far.
I do agree that LG and Samsung may have to consolidate their platform strategy (though they've done well enough thus far). I don't think it is given that Symbian will be the one dropped (certainly not for Samsung). It makes more sense to drop one of the less technical capable / flexible platforms.
Android may be seen as new and shiny, but that does not make it better. Symbian has more cutting edge features than Android and is technically more advanced (reflecting its maturity). Of course the relative technical merits of each platform are only one factor in deciding what gets used.
And while Nokia has acquired Symbian it also setting it free opensource in the Symbian Foundation. Its the same as the OHA and Google.