Swedish mobile software firm UIQ filed for bankruptcy December 30, a victim of the Symbian Foundation’s formation last June. UIQ, once jointly owned by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, is the creator of the UIQ Symbian-based mobile platform. The problem that UIQ ran into was that of open source. It’s revenues were previously derived from its intellectual property–all Symbian-related. But with the creation of the Symbian Foundation, UIQ’s intellectual property became free. Both Motorola and Sony Ericsson are supporters of the Symbian Foundation (so was UIQ), and both widely used UIQ at one time, but each jumped ship in the latter half of 2008 to focus on other mobile platforms such as Android.
The changes effectively left UIQ with no customers and no revenue sources. Sony Ericsson actually continued to fund the company after Motorola left in November in case UIQ found a new opportunity to pursue. But with nothing by the end of December the company was insolvent and forced under Swedish law to file for bankruptcy.
UIQ’s platform will be rolled into the open source Symbian Foundation platform and 230 employees are now looking for a new job in–big understatement here–an unpromising economy.
