Sony Ericsson and Motorola going to share UIQ.

Motorola has recently announced intention to buy a 50% stake of UI Holdings BV - the parent company of UIQ Technology AB, which is currently wholly owned by Sony Ericsson.

In this regard, Sony Ericsson and Motorola will jointly develop UIQ platform, which is one of the major modifications of the operating system Symbian and they have agreed to make a platform UIQ open to all producers. They are committed to further advancing UIQ as a strong, independent cross-vendor user interface for smartphones and media-centric phones.

As we know, UIQ is developing an interface for Symbian based phones. In 2002, the company offered the industry’s first touch-screen interface 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.

Among the most successful Symbian/UIQ devices released by Sony Ericsson and Motorola can be noted Sony Ericsson P1 smartphone and Sony Ericsson W960 music smartphone from Walkman family and Motorola - MOTO Z8.

Many analysts think that Sony Ericsson’s and Motorola’s intention to jointly develop UIQ platform for Symbian OS is due to the growing popularity of alternative operating systems for smart phones. According to ABI Research, in 2006, the Symbian OS accounted for a 73% market share. However, it is predicted that by 2012, faced by strong competition from Windows Mobile and Linux, Symbian's market share can fall down to 46%.

Unfortunately, nothing has been reported about the financial side of the transaction, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.