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.
Read on in the full article.
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.
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?
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.
2 losers have joined their forces!
"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.
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.
"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.
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".
"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.
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.
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...
Why would anyone from Nokia say it was possible if it wasn't?
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.
As far as I remember the people who suggested a move to Linux were columnists on various unofficial websites.
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).
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).
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