It’s no secret that UIQ effectively died when it merged into the Symbian Foundation earlier this year. But at a Symbian event this week in London, Sony Ericsson reiterated that the platform is destined for certain death and mentioning that it “didn’t attract the operator, manufacturer or consumer interest needed to stop it from failing.” Ouch.
Sony Ericsson’s selling half of its UIQ smartphone software unit to Motorola, which will be run independently of both companies (it’s “not a joint venture”) with the goal of “creating a platform which can be shared by a number of operators.” In particular, they want to eventually knock Nokia’s Symbian-based S60 off the top of the smartphone platform list.
To that end, they’re looking to bring in another company at some point in the future, though for now the board’ll be evenly composed of Moto and SE people. The deal itself sounds kind of messy, so let’s hope the platform they put out is decidedly less so. [Reuters]
