Sony Ericsson acquires UIQ

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Update October 13, 2005
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So, the beauty is out there, the new Sony Ericsson P990 based on UIQ 3.0 - predictable.

The challange for Sony Ericsson is to catch the enterprise business for real, but at a fair price level. Nokias E-Series are sheduled to reach customers at a price between $420 and $540.

With the bricks (Nokias 9500 and 9300) reaching 1 million sales - its not difficult to figure out how well the E-series will hit the enterprise market.

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October 9, 2005
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Canalys research indicates that the trends observed within the EMEA mobile device market in 2004 have accelerated during the first half of 2005. Shipments of converged smart mobile devices, namely smart phones and wireless handhelds, grew from 3.6 million in H1 2004 to 9.6 million in H1 2005, representing a 170% year-on-year rise.

Canalys estimates that just under 80% of the smart phones shipped in EMEA in the first half of 2005 were Series 60, keypad-based handsets, with Nokia’s keyboard-oriented Series 80 models accounting for another 13% and those based on the stylus-oriented UIQ interface a further 4%.

The Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and BlackBerry smart phone platforms combined to represent the remaining 5%. Windows Mobile of course fares much better in the wireless handheld segment, being used on almost two-thirds of the devices shipped in H1 2005, many of these branded by the mobile operators themselves, the other third being accounted for by RIM with its established BlackBerry wireless handheld design.

Sources
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http://www.canalys.com/pr/2005/r2005094.htm
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UIQ is 100% owned by Symbian Ltd, which per its turn its funded by major device makers - Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, Panasonic and Samsung.

Nokia, which controls 48% of Symbians shareholding, is naturally UIQs sugar daddy. Ironically, the platform is licensed to Sony Ericsson and Motorola (Motorola, which left Symbians shareholder seat in 2003) and other less known manufacturers such as Arima and BenQ.

UIQ 3.0 looks promising, very flexible, and commercial - but not a single licensee was announced for this release. Tricky, the release was announced already in February 2004. Sony Ericsson will probably stick to it, but that is not news.

Sony Ericsson will acquire UIQ, its just a question of time and Nokia getting tired of funding the "alternative" platform for the sake if Symbians self labeled independence.