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back to article UIQ 'files for bankruptcy' in Sweden

UIQ has finally thrown in the towel and reportedly applied for bankruptcy in the Swedish courts. The mobile interface developer's employees were warned their jobs were on the line back in November. Back then Sony Ericsson, one of its few remaining backers along with Motorola, said it would fund the firm's wages while it …

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  1. Giles Jones Gold badge

    No surprise there then

    Sony Ericsson were pretty much the only customer you could name, there's no new UIQ SE phone and so it's bye bye UIQ.

    What I saw of it the death of it is fairly well deserved. Comparing the iPhone, Android phone or a modernish dumbphone to UIQ makes UIQ look like it was written in 15 years ago.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    It may look like it was written 15 years ago...

    ...but it just works flawlessly and without sucking the battery dry in no time. At least the SE P1i just bought from eBay does, compared to the Windows Mobile Phones and Symbian Phones I had/have...

    It the first phone OS I actually trust that it does what it tells me it does...

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  3. Andrew Moore

    Another point to Motorola

    They killed UIQ like they killed Psion.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC

    I agree with you in liking UIQ more than WinCE, but it is just an interface layer that runs on Symbian, so any difference to other Symbian phones is probably because they were using S60 (Nokia). I never had strong feelings between UIQ and S60, so the advantages of a unified Symbian interface might be worth the loss. Nokia developer support for S60 had been improving up to the big Symbian announcement, although I haven't really been dealing with them since then.

    I also gave up on WinCE about two years ago. At the time, none of the devices I could find even had an off switch. As a developer, if I left one of them in the desk for a week, it needed to be plugged in and have the time and date reset to be used again. Who builds a battery-powered device with no off switch? I assume that has been fixed by now, but what a mess.

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  5. Mike
    Unhappy

    Sad to see it go...

    I've also got a SE P1i and love it. It truly is the perfection of SE's decade-long attempts to make the perfect smartphone. And now it seems it is the end of the road....

    UIQ, it's sad to see you go.

    Hopefully Nokia can take up the slack in the touch-screen Symbian market....

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  6. whitespacephil
    Dead Vulture

    Bye Bye UIQ

    I will miss you. And your special ways.

    Even so, my brand spanking new C905 has not replaced by P1i as my primary phone which I shall just have to keep ticking over until whatever the next revolution is.

    Rest in peace.

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  7. Rikke Helms

    On the cards...

    Even though the demise of UIQ has been on the cards for a couple of months now, this news still highlights just how far the open-source movement has come in the mobility space. Everyone from application developers to handset manufacturers now seem to hold the expectation that intellectual property ought to come for free, especially in the current climate. It may be too early to say whether or not the royalty-based model is doomed, however it's clear that mobile software vendors must continue to innovate, and would be well-advised to establish alternate revenue streams if they are to survive long-term in the mobility market.

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