Sony Ericsson Sells Half of UIQ to Motorola

Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson announced today its selling half of its smartphone unit UIQ to rival Motorola.

Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson announced today it is selling a 50 percent stake in its wholly-owned subsidiary UIQ to rival phone maker Motorola for an undisclosed amount. Both Sony Ericsson and Motorola have licensed UIQ’s interface and smartphone platforms for many years; under the new arrangement, Sony Ericsson and Motorola will both increase their support for the UIQ developer program and development of the UIQ open user interface platform.

Sony Ericsson just bought UIQ from Symbian in February of this year.

“This is an important transaction that demonstrates the increasing importance of open operating systems for all handset vendors,” said President of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Miles Flint, in a statement. “By working together in a strong, mutually beneficial partnership, hand-set vendors can reduce development costs and help operators launch more consistent services with greater efficiency.”

Sony Ericsson and Motorola are hoping their joint backing of the UIQ platform will encourage developers to produce mobile services, games, and other applications, as well as to license the UIQ platform for their own mobile devices. Platform competition in the mobile arena is increasing, particularly amongst smartphones, and BlackBerry, Symbian, Palm, and Microsoft vie for dominance in the corporate and enterprise arenas, while Apple’s Mac OS X-based platform for the iPhone remains (for the time being) closed to developers.