Symbian UIQ Shared by Motorola and Sony Ericsson

Motorola and Sony Ericsson announced they have reached an agreement under which Motorola will own 50% of UI Holdings BV. UI Holdings BV is the company that holds UIQ Technology AB, currently owned by Sony Ericsson which acquired it from Symbian in February this year. Following the agreement, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will closely collaborate and invest for UIQ development.

Competing with Nokia's Series 60 software, the UIQ open user interface is licensed by UIQ Technology to mobile phone vendors all over the globe. Motorola and Sony Ericsson want to continue license UIQ as an independent and strong cross-vendor user interface for mobile devices and they agreed that UIQ has to be vendor and chipset independent.

Johan Sandberg, Chief Executive Officer of UIQ Technology, declared: "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."

Over the years, both Motorola and Sony Ericsson had UIQ licenses, launching successful devices that operate on Symbian/UIQ, like Motorola MOTO Z8, the W960 Walkman phone and the Sony Ericsson P1. The UIQ interface offered in 2002 the first touch-screen interface and currently supports classic numerical keyboard and QWERTY configurations, plus finger touch data input.

The agreement between Motorola and Sony Ericsson, which makes Motorola co-owner of UI Holdings BV, will be completed by the end of 2007. Both Sony Ericsson and Motorola intend to expand the ownership of UIQ in the future.