Sony Ericsson and Motorola have teamed up to form a joint venture which could become a significant player in defining the software operating systems for next generation mobile phone design platforms 

Motorola and Sony Ericsson will work together in the development of the UIQ open user interface platform as part of a joint venture which will see Motorola taking a 50% interest in UI Holdings BV, the parent company of UIQ Technology AB, which is currently wholly owned by Sony Ericsson.

UIQ Technology, which Sony Ericsson acquired from Symbian in February, licenses the UIQ open user interface and development platform to mobile phone vendors. That move was seen as a significant endorsement for the Symbian OS operaing system which is competing with the Microsoft CE operating system for success in the mobile handset market. 

The links with Symbian are signficant. The mobile OS firm itself has a number of stakeholders including Nokia with 47.9%, Sony Ericsson with 13.1% and Samsung with 4.5%.

The intention now, said Motorola and Sony Ericsson, is to promote UIQ as “a strong, independent cross-vendor user interface for smartphones and media-centric phones”.  

Other companies will be invited to license the technology or even take a stake in the joint venture. ARM is already a partner of UIQ.

“This is an important transaction that demonstrates the increasing importance of open operating systems for all handset vendors,” said Miles Flint, president of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

Sony Ericsson and Motorola each have been UIQ licensees for a number of years and have launched several successful Symbian/UIQ based products including, the Sony Ericsson P1 smartphone, the new W960 Walkman phone and the Motorola MOTO Z8.

One feature of the UIQ platform is a touch-screen interface which supports both QWERTY and classic numerical keyboard configurations as well as finger touch data input.

The Symbian/UIQ platform is also the basis of a collaboration between Ericsson and chip firm Texas Instruments.

Both companies have agreed that UIQ will be vendor and chipset independent. In addition, UIQ will be licensed on equal terms to all mobile device vendors in the industry. Sony Ericsson and Motorola are committed to expanding the shareholder base of UI Holdings to include other handset vendors.

“Motorola’s investment in UIQ will enable us to bring feature-competitive multimedia devices to market. Its flexibility will enable us to bring devices to market that meet regional preferences or specific operator customisation requirements,” said Alain Mutricy, senior v-p platforms at Motorola Mobile Devices.