Is Motorola and UIQ The New OS, or the Real Thing?
by Ewan Spence
Looking forward to CTIA, there’s one question I want to be able to answer, and that’s the strategy Motorola are following. Last week’s announcement that they have purchased 50% of UIQ from Sony Ericsson, and that the two companies are looking for a third to joiningg them in owning UIQ makes for interesting reading.
Motorola’s high-end mobile strategy has been scattershot at best, with strong efforts in using Linux for smartphones and Java in other handsets. So is the choice to go with UIQ attempting to cover another base, internal politics at play, or a reset of their strategy?
What is clear is that Motorola, a founding partner in Symbian who sold their share of the organization in 2003 to allow a ‘neutral’ look at the main OS choices (including Windows Mobile), has found a way to reconcile the purchase of UIQ (which Sony Ericcson bought out of Symbian last year), and that leads me to think they’re on course to put a lot of effort behind Symbian OS and UIQ.
And this is where CTIA is going to come in. Symbian, UIQ and Motorola are all on the floor, and while it’s obvious from last week’s Symbian Smartphone Show that the European companies are excited to have them on board, the reaction form the American side of Motorola is going to be a big factor in just how important the UIQ relationship is.
For too long Symbian has been looking at the American market and metaphorically humming “New York, New York†(If I can make it there…). Nokia have never established a solid enough beachhead beyond the pay as you go market, and some isolated breakouts of the N95 and E61i – with Motorola already dug into the US market, if they’re serious they could give Symbian the place in the US market they feel they deserve.
So all I want to know when I leave the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week is if Motorola really have the hunger….
