UIQ plans to expand after Motorola deal

UIQ Technology, the company behind one of the two user interfaces for the Symbian mobile OS, will continue expanding after Motorola takes a 50 percent stake in the company.

UIQ has grown from 160 employees in February to around 350 now, most of whom are product engineers, said Carina Dietmann, head of corporate and marketing communications, at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London on Tuesday.

Motorola is expected to devote resources to UIQ, whose interface is mostly used in phones by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and Motorola, but also from other manufacturers such as BenQ. UIQ’s user interface competes with Nokia’s Series 60, which is used in more handsets.

“There will for sure be continued growth in product development and number of employees,” Dietmann said.

UIQ recently opened a research and development facility in Budapest staffed with 14 employees and the majority of developers are based in Ronneby, Sweden, Dietmann said.

The company licenses the user interface and new licensing deals are in the works, but Dietmann said she could not provide further details.

UIQ’s development efforts will focus on multimedia.”We are going to put a lot of effort in enhancing the user experience even more,” she said.

Mobile application developers who work with the UIQ interface were pleased with Motorola’s stake in UIQ, said David Mery, who is the editor of the UIQ developer program.

“All of the feedback has been very, very positive,” he said.

Mery said the developer program has been focused on certifying applications that are compatible on Sony Ericsson and Motorola phones. Sony Ericsson’s use of touch-screen functionality meant that some applications for it could not work as well on Motorola phones, he said.

The developer program has now certified about 50 of the more than 600 applications for the UIQ user interface for use on phones from both manufacturers, Mery said.