Sony Ericsson + Motorola owns UIQ. Bright (or dark) future ahead.
Wednesday, 17. October 2007, 14:41:43
When the news was announced a day before the Smartphone Show, everybody thought that this is the big news that is being kept away for long. Since Sony Ericsson acquired UIQ early this year, I believe there were many going-ons and this is one of the results.
Who knows who or what will happen next?
I'll try to give some of my honest opinion about this announcement. First of all, Sony Ericsson has shown it's commitment towards UIQ for many years which resulted in a handful of UIQ powered Symbian smartphones (P800, P900, P910, P990, P1, M600, W950, W960). Although SE did not release many smartphones compared to the Finnish behemoth, the first generation UIQ 2 smartphones from SE are considered almost perfect for it's fanboys. Why? Many reasons, the built quality, the physical size and also SE's willingness to answer to users' grief with firmware releases. However, when P990 entered together with M600 and W950, the world turned upside down. The new generation uses Symbian's new kernel 9.1 and a totally overhauled UIQ 3. Many loved it but most hated it. The result, user frustration and migration to other platforms.
Who knows who or what will happen next?
I'll try to give some of my honest opinion about this announcement. First of all, Sony Ericsson has shown it's commitment towards UIQ for many years which resulted in a handful of UIQ powered Symbian smartphones (P800, P900, P910, P990, P1, M600, W950, W960). Although SE did not release many smartphones compared to the Finnish behemoth, the first generation UIQ 2 smartphones from SE are considered almost perfect for it's fanboys. Why? Many reasons, the built quality, the physical size and also SE's willingness to answer to users' grief with firmware releases. However, when P990 entered together with M600 and W950, the world turned upside down. The new generation uses Symbian's new kernel 9.1 and a totally overhauled UIQ 3. Many loved it but most hated it. The result, user frustration and migration to other platforms.
Secondly, Motorola used to be a part of Symbian's early history. With A910, A920, A1000, A1010, M1000, and the recent Z8, Motorola is the only manufacturer other than SE to devote some effort for UIQ. Also, when Sendo went belly up, Motorola bought Sendo's R&D team which resulted in the innovation in Z8. A lot of innovations in Z8 are developed by the ex-Sendo team, most noticably is the excellent Home Screen which reminisce Sendo-X's Now! Screen.Later on, it left Symbian shareholding in 2003 to concentrate it's forces on diversified approaches on mobile (read : Linux, WinMob, Java & proprietary). However, Motorola's piece in the smartphone pie is still considered small compared to the Finnish Giant and the Swedish Japan collaboration. Even in it's native soil, US, Motorola did not leave any significant impact on the smartphone industry and compete fiercely with BlackBerry, Sidekick and recently, Apple's iPhone. Motorola needs to reshape and restrategise in order to get more slice of the smartphone industry.
It's still uncertain what the marriage of these 2 cellphone giants will bring to the UIQ ecosystem. In one hand, Sony Ericsson's UIQ developer community has grown and compared to Motorola's, SE clearly wins. On the other hand, Motorola's experience in bringing attractive and fashionable hardware design in the cellphone industry is unrivalled.
Also, in the wake of more innovative competition from other industry players like Apple's entry with iPhone (although it's NOT a smartphone) and S60 entering the touch UI as well, UIQ's legacy touch UI need to be redefined. Among Symbian's flavours, UIQ is consistently using touch UI since the very beginning and future UIQ configurations must compete with iPhone's UI and S60's Touch UI. The ability to use multiple touch and using fingers instead of stylus is the talk of the town now.
Another aspect that we should look forward from this new UIQ ownership is the applications itself. A smartphone, no matter how good the hardware and system being used, is useless without good applications. The world around us is moving towards simplifying life. UIQ needs to bring new types of applications to make full use of it's capabilities. One example I can write is the Web-browser. Towards Web 2.0, a web browser is not just used to find information but it is used to interact and create contents. A true powerful mobile web will be able to translate the internet on mobile device without changes. There is only ONE internet and that it should be made viewable in any browser. Viewing videos, listening to audios, sending photos etc are just so yesteryears. The future mobile internet will make people left their laptop to use their mobiles to enrich their life.
To sum it up, I welcome Motorola's re-entry into Symbian ecosystem and with full force, it will give significant impact to UIQ's future directions. Two are better than one.
I welcome any additional comments
WIDGETIZE
AndyJ # 17. October 2007, 21:38
P990 has shown that SE can at least try to throw off board many fans and users who have for years believed in quality touch screen devices. I am one of those. For 3-4 years, I have not accepted anything else than a touch screen mobile telecom device. I had P800, P900 and now P990. P990 has been a frustration but still I've sticked on board SE -- barily. The next 1-2 years will (for me) show who really wants to produce quality touch screen devices with great usability. Will it be SE or some one else, I yet do now know. I'm pessimistic and feel that actually nobody in the long run.
Probably for device manufactures the quality won't be a big issue. What I predict is that the brand and the popularity of masses will win, which (looking at all this now) wont' be a good thing for SE. This is for two reasons: a) they have (potentially) lost the quality touch screen device reputation with P990 and b) they are not the sexy (Apple) and dominant (Nokia) brand on the market. Apple makes great usability but with lesser features, Nokia makes more features but with lesser usability and quality than SE (up to P990). But this doesn't matter as what comes to the big user masses -- brand and image matters, not the quality. A manufacturer with good quality, feature rich device (which SE used to be) will not win. Brand and image will win, not a good thing from the viewpoint of a power user....
PS: I've used both SE and Nokia devices even though I am primarily a SE device user.
asrialbaker # 18. October 2007, 16:57
Thanks for your very insightful comment. I strongly felt that the decision to split UIQ ownership has many reasons, one of them is to attract more manufacturers to join UIQ as licensee or maybe ownership. Looking at Nokia's strategy with S60, many who have tried like Siemens (RIP), Sendo (RIP) and Panasonic, didnt stand a chance to compete with Nokia's own assault on the smartphone market. I mean, as a cellphone giant where you sell 3 out of 4 phones, you wont let others to take your market dominance that easy. Its just gimmick... I still remember Siemens SX-1 users moaning about a folder called C:\System\Nokia inside the filesystem... A Siemens with a Nokia folder in it? What the heck! ...
However, everything in life mirrors circles. You cant be at the top forever and this smartphone industry is just starting to roll. There's too many possibilities to be talked about.
In my opinion, instead of finding partners to develop UIQ 3 further, right now, both SE and Moto needs to sit down and tweak UIQ (the UI on top of Symbian OS) to be better. Make it more attractive and easier to use and put the latest bells and whistles without compromising stability, RAM memory and power management...
My 2 cents