UIQ files for bankruptcy as Symbian Foundation gears up for battle
“There are no opportunities to create a new line of business in the current financial climate.” Those are the words of UIQ CEO Johan Sandberg as he informed Reuters UK that UIQ Technology AB was filing for bankruptcy. UIQ, owned in majority by Sony Ericsson and Motorola, received a death blow from which it could not recover as a result of the formation of the Symbian Foundation, and with the introduction of Nokia’s touch-friendly mobile operating system, S60 5th Edition. UIQ first began cutting its workforce back in July as its majority holders moved to the Symbian platform. Both Sony Ericsson and Motorola joined the Open Handset Alliance as well, leaving little room for the UIQ OS which has struggled with adoption throughout its lifespan. Now that Symbian will be available to partners free of charge thanks to the Symbian Foundation, the world’s most popular smartphone OS proved to be too much for UIQ to compete with. UIQ currently employs approximately 200 people and it has yet to make a formal statement regarding its bankruptcy.
Not quite right – both S60 and UIQ are GUI environments for Symbian (analogous to what Windows 3 was to DOS 6.) The devs and funding didn’t jump to Symbian – they were already developing for Symbian – they jumped to S60, a competing Symbian GUI environment.
I think Symbian can compete with Android – it’s already got a TON of apps, devs, funding and – perhaps most importantly – a gigantic user base. Google has their work cut out for them. Even with the fruity companies’ gains and Microsoft’s advances in the mobile world, everyone’s still playing catch-up to Symbian (and now, by extension, Nokia.)
It’ll be interesting to watch.
Windows Mobile will soon be in the same position going by MS’s current lack of enthusiasm for the platform.
Don’t ever die UIQ…
Ichoiced SE’s smartphones be cause of UIQ OS. Why SE change their phone OS to windows (x1)? Commersial factor? Their old users n fans are most interest key to succes! I think UIQ can be smarter n more better than Windows n Android if run on Symbian 9.5 “UIQ 5.x”…. UIQ always in our heart, keep live UIQ (The Best OS ever on SonyEricsson)