Nokia unveils touchscreen UI: Message to Apple: Watch your back

Nokia Corp. will answer the iPhone’s splashy user interface with advancements in its own Series 60 UI that runs its smartphone offerings, the Finnish giant said at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London.
Nokia will offer the upgraded UI to rivals on a licensing basis, in a move apparently designed to further dilute Apple’s much-vaunted advantage with its disruptive iPhone offering, due to hit European shelves Nov. 9.
“The S60 will introduce new features that enhance the user experience and enable manufacturers, developers and operators to design new types of mobile devices, applications and services,” the Finnish hardware-vendor-turned-would-be-Internet-giant said in a release.
The innovations will allow licensees to offer touchscreen interfaces that can stand alone (input via stylus or finger) or be augmented by a QWERTY or a traditional keypad. The touchscreen functions will support tactile feedback. The latter, plus the possible addition of alternative input methods, have been cited as drawbacks for Apple’s initial iPhone release in the United States.
The race is on by traditional handset vendors to meet Apple’s challenge. And much may depend on how swiftly Nokia can bring its advanced S60 UI to market. Apple has dominated the industry’s conversation over handsets since unveiling the iPhone in January, and has racked up enviable sales of its relatively high-priced device in its first quarter to market. Yet incumbent handset vendors retain a structural market advantage with their global brands, diversified portfolios and distribution networks.
Yet the incumbents cannot yield the field of innovation to an upstart. That may explain yesterday’s news that Motorola Inc. will purchase a 50% stake in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications’ UIQ Technology AB, which SEMC bought from Symbian Ltd. last February. Outgoing SEMC CEO Miles Flint said the two owners of UIQ Technology would recruit a chairman to drive the business, whose board will include executives from both mobile phone firms.