Independence Day
Sony Ericsson ceo Miles Flint has told Mobile Europe that he thinks there is space in the market for an independently owned UI software platform for an open OS – and that that platform is UIQ.
Flint said that Sony Ericsson remains committed to opening up ownership of UIQ, which it bought out from Symbian and currently owns entirely.
Asked who he thought would be interested in coming on board as a UIQ licensee, he said, “There is space for a UI platform that is truly hardware and vendor independent. There’s a significant difficulty in persuading others to license a UI platform if it is totally one company driven. So we set up UIQ as a separate company, which at the moment is owned by Sony Ericsson, but we absolutely do not expect to keep it that way.”
But Flint refused to be drawn on likely licensees or investors, saying he didn't want to get into specifics of "this or that comapny". Motorola is one company which has previously licensed UIQ – for instance in its RIZR Z8.
The problem with this view of an untapped demand for an independent UI platform, is that Nokia has not exactly struggled for licensees for its S60 platform, even though that is “entirely one company driven.” The other problem for Flint is that he admitted that UIQ had suffered within Symbian – “for various reasons it had not had enough investment inside Symbian”. So why would opening up UIQ ownership mean that the company could avoid those investment conflicts in future? The clear implication is that now UIQ is free from Symbian, with its heavy Nokia presence, it will benefit.
“We have said very clearly that UIQ would be equally as open as Symbian –and over time will there will be the opportunity to buy a wider range of UIQ handsets,” Flint added.
One driver for the open platform approach, Flint said, is the increasing need of operators and consumers to add their own applications, built to an API on the open platform, onto the phone. UIQ also supports the need for multiple input technologies, he said, including full QWERTY and touch screen.
Flint also said that he has yet to see “the mobile TV proposition that we can really turn into a compelling user experience.”
“Screen quality and codecs we can do,” he said “but the ecosystem out there that enables me to buy a phone in the UK and take it away and watch TV in Italy is still somewhere off sadly. We’re agnostic about standards but the fact of that competition is that it is slowing down the adoption of mobile TV.”