Sony Mobile Evangelist

I found this interesting piece of news at uiqblog. I have been following all the developments regarding UIQ over the years, and in this writeup I'm posting my views on UIQ and Sony Ericsson and what went wrong. I'll start with just a snippet of the recent developments.

Symbian development will focus on the company's Lund office, near Malmo, which will become the company's new Symbian "competence hub". Symbian application development isn't a priority, sources suggest, with the focus instead on integration.

Yesterday's announcement made no mention the UIQ office at Ronneby, Sweden. UIQ is the joint venture with Motorola which began life in the 1990s as an Ericsson R&D lab, and which had invested heavily in system and application development for the UIQ user interface for Symbian devices.

UIQ was the first casualty of the announcement by the acquisition of Symbian by Nokia back in June, as Sony Ericsson decided it would develop new UIs based on Nokia's S60 instead. UIQ's London and Budapest offices were closed, and deep redundancies at Ronneby left the office as little more than a stub. One source suggest all Sony Ericsson's Symbian application developers will leave by the end of next March.

When I first heard of UIQ back in 2002, Sony Ericsson had just launched the P800, which if I recall correctly, was the most advanced phone that had been announced at that time. It was the first phone with Symbian OS to have a Touch screen, Built in camera, Bluetooth and handwriting recognition. Back in 2002....my reaction...WOW!

By 2004, UIQ had announced its partnership with Opera and Sony Ericsson had announced two more smartphones, the P900 and P910, the latter being the first phone with an integrated push-Email solution with Office editor.

The P900 wasn't too different from its predecessor, although the design was much more refined. The P910 can be called a breakthrough though, as it had a superior function set.

By then, it was pretty easy to associate the word 'Innovation' with UIQ. Am sure those who actually owned one of these handsets will agree with me. Why...I've met people who actually own one of these handsets even now!


And then when UIQ3 was announced, it showed that UIQ had truly arrived and was competent enough to compete on the big stage. When the P990 was announced in 2005, public euphoria was at its peak. And even though Sony Ericsson delayed the handset's launch extensively, people still waited. That was the sort of reputation that Sony Ericsson UIQ handsets had built for themselves.

But this was the turning point. Until then, Sony Ericsson UIQ smartphones, when launched, became leaders of their line, the best handsets in their classes. The superior function set, design and usability ensured that Sony Ericsson UIQ smartphones easily outperformed their rivals.

However, the gap between the rivals and the Sony Ericsson reduced with each new handset. Other manufacturers introduced smartphones that directly competed with Sony Ericsson's UIQ handsets. Unlike earlier, when there were few devices in the market, and Sony Ericsson controlled majority of it, Nokia was the major player and constantly churned out S60 devices to reiterate the fact.

The P990 was indeed a great device, but in my opinion, the device lost its sheen due to Sony Ericsson's mismanagement. Endless delays, buggy firmware, poor quality firmware updates all added up.

Now it was upto Sony Ericsson to clean up the mess it had made, and start afresh. And judging by the trendsetter Sony Ericsson had shown it could be, I had no qualms at that time that SE would fix their issues soon.

The reason why I was hoping that SE would fix its problems soon was that, I had been following the development of UIQ right from the beginning, and although the latest UIQ device, the P990 was pretty good, continuing the focus on 'innovation'(it was the first device to feature an integrated business card scanner), it did NOT enjoy a safety margin, as compared to its predecessors. As I had said before, rivals were manufacturing products directly competing with SE UIQ smartphones. Nokia had already started to incorporate all the features of UIQ3 in its top end S60 models.

And that's where, somehow, Sony Ericsson lost its track. The situation demanded that Sony Ericsson introduce more UIQ smartphones in the market, so as to be continued to be considered as a major force in the smartphone market, and that's what fans hoped it would do. However, due to problems with production capacity and shortage of manpower, SE failed to deliver, thereby enabling its major rival Nokia to stamp its superiority over the smartphone market.



Sony Ericsson launched the M600 and the W950 in 2006, which were moderately successful, but they weren't good enough for SE to redeem its place as one of the major smartphone manufacturers in the market.

The P1 and W960 were launched in 2007, sporting a refurbished UIQ interface. The UI was much enhanced and usability had greatly improved. The increased RAM further added to the stability of the devices. After a few months after their launch, it was evident that the P1 clearly overshadowed its walkman counterpart, and the device became pretty popular.

However, although SE UIQ handsets improved in their feature set and usability, they never appealed to the mass market. In that sense, SE UIQ smartphones were only catering to a particular niche of customers and evoked interest in only those who were fans and loyal to the SE UIQ smartphone line, but few others.

For reasons known only to Sony Ericsson itself, it kept key features, which were already made popular in other smartphones by rival manufacturers, out of its smartphone lineup. I would not like to elaborate on them as UIQ enthusiasts will surely be aware of them.

It also made me think and realize the change in Sony Ericsson's policies. As to how a company which was seen as a trendsetter earlier, now waited and sat on, till the new features are introduced and made popular by rivals, and only then incorporate it in its own products.

From being a pioneer in its class, with the added advantage of touch enabled handsets, Sony Ericsson still failed to take their success a step further.

This radical shift had left many loyal fans fuming, tired of waiting, some had already made the jump. Others, loyalists like me perhaps, stuck on....hoping that things would improve.


Come 2008 and Sony Ericsson finally realized, that in order to make UIQ a success, it needs to sell more devices, much more than it has been selling over the recent years. And for this, the device in question should appeal to the mass market. Enter the G700 and G900. Both handsets although not differing from predecessors as far as hardware goes, but are pretty appealing firmware wise. I got myself a G700 recently and I'll be publishing my review soon, but frankly speaking, I am overawed with the improvements. The UIQ interface has been greatly enhanced, its much more finger friendly and its simply a joy to use. The entire credit goes to the folks at UIQ!

However, now with the advent of the Symbian foundation, Sony Ericsson has ditched UIQ and has decided to develop new UIs based on Nokia's S60 instead. Which is pretty saddening, cause I consider UIQ to be a much superior platform as compared to S60.

Sony Ericsson only has itself to blame for the failure of its smartphone lineup. Instead of dishing out pricy, all out expensive solutions that target only a niche segment, it should have been more responsive towards users' needs and devised a way to incorporate them in future products.

It would be improper to blame UIQ. Whatever success the G series handsets enjoy, is due to the hard work put in by UIQ. In my opinion, Sony Ericsson's biggest failure will be not to have realised and tapped UIQ's full potential. Am sure many of you will agree with me that UIQ had a lot of potential. Their innovative mindset, was what that set them apart. Just check out their prototype concepts and you'll understand just what I am talking about.

I believed in UIQ, and I had hoped that Sony Ericsson would believe in it too. Sadly, things aren't always as you'd like them to be.

Sony Ericsson itself is under a lot of pressure. They have started implementing plans to align its operations and resources worldwide to meet an increasingly competitive business environment and to help restore its capability for profitable growth. All we can do is hope that symbian comes back to the forefront once the symbian foundation comes into action and Sony Ericsson manages to get the formula right this time.