Motorola Inc. apparently kickstarted its ongoing efforts to broaden its smartphone offerings and bring Internet-based services to them by buying 50% of UIQ Technology last week from rival Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The rivals actually will each own half of UI Holdings BV, the parent of UIQ Technology. Sony Ericsson bought UIQ from Symbian Ltd. in February and has reached out to rivals to share the cost of owning and developing the open operating system known as UIQ. UIQ’s underlying platform is the Symbian OS.
“Sony Ericsson was keen to have this deal and to spread ownership further,” said Shailendra Pandey, analyst at ABI Research. “Ultimately, this deal will result in more Symbian-based devices coming to market.”
The two rivals’ work on UIQ will enable both to quickly expand their smartphone offerings, a growth sector with strong margins, the analyst said. UIQ is particularly well-suited to touchscreen technologies, he added. “I’m interested to see how this evolves for Motorola,” said Pandey.
Help post-Razr
The analyst said he had not seen any standout devices in Motorola’s recent wave of handset launches and that the investment in UIQ should help the ailing handset giant in developing new, post-Razr platforms in a bid to regain brand luster, market share and profitability. Pandey said he expected to see results from those efforts by the end of 2008.
In a prepared e-mail statement, Motorola said that its investment reflected its advocacy of open software development.
“This (deal) gives us access to the best available software platforms and technologies to help us solve customer problems, meet regional requirements and get our devices to market quickly,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Lyons. “UIQ is an open, customizable development platform that enables us to respond to regional preferences of carriers, especially in Europe.”
The “customizable” aspect appears key to the recent deal between two rivals. The underlying software platform, optimal for touchscreen display offerings in combination with other input means such as QWERTY keypads, can be customized to differentiate one’s offerings, thus the common investment by rivals, according to Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ.
“The UIQ platform allows extensive innovation and differentiation so vendors can keep their own ‘look and feel’ across a range of devices,” Sandberg said. “The openness of the platform takes advantage of third-party applications and that broadens the vendors’ ability to serve their carrier customers.”
Current development efforts have focused on providing Web-based content in frameworks other than a handset’s browser-“Web 2.0,” according to Sandberg. Currently, “tens of thousands” of developers have SDKs (software development kits) for UIQ version 3, he said.
Having Sony Ericsson and Motorola spearhead the development of UIQ was good for the handset market, Sandberg said.
Balance brought
“This brings balance to the Symbian story,” Sandberg said. “It’s not all about Nokia.”
Sandberg said that laboring under two masters was “a good setup.” UIQ Technology will perform its basic work at arm’s length from its two owners, which control the holding company and board that governs the corporation, according to Sandberg. Still, that’s a challenge.
“I have to balance the will of these two companies,” Sandberg said.
Motorola’s news had been preceded by days by word that UIQ Technology had acquired nine new “partners”-essentially, independent software vendors (ISVs)-bringing the total to about 30, according to Sandberg.
UIQ Technology is based in Ronneby, Sweden, with a development office in Budapest and marketing office in London, and currently has 350 employees.
