Sony Ericsson, in a surprising movement (at least to me), has decided to acquire the UIQ Technologies division of Symbian. They must have their reasons, but can’t stop thinking one of them surely is the multiple critics that P990 has gotten since its launch. Until now, UIQ couldn’t focus its development in any particular manufacturer, because Symbian is a company owned by multiple cellphone companies, and being so, they must develop a standard product which can be implemented in multiple and very different devices from different brands with minimum modifications software-wise. This approach has its advantages, but it doesn’t come without drawbacks, and one of them is that the interface must work in different kind of terminals, which limits it quite a deal. Having full control over UIQ’s development will enable Sony Ericsson to custom the interface to their likings, making it as good as the one in the rest of the Sony Ericsson terminals.

Another question to pay attention to is whether this could affect UIQ’s popularity between developers. Right now, there are only 3 UIQ 3.0 terminals in the market: the M600, W950 and P990. This is a very low number compared to UIQ 2.x, which was adopted not only by Sony Ericsson, but also by Motorola and BenQ, to name a couple more. The difference translates in the number of UIQ 3.0 users in the market, which is quite lower than UIQ 2.x back at its time. And number of potential users is a very (if not the most) important factor for a software developer, when it comes to decide whether to develop software for that platform or not. And UIQ, without third-party software, doesn’t worth much. Sony Ericsson claims that the rest of the manufacturers will be able to acquire Symbian UIQ licenses just like they have been doing until this moment. The real question is if they will want to do that, once Sony Ericsson decide to adapt UIQ more and more to their devices.

The transaction is expected to be completed over the next few months.

Read about this in the Symbian site

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