UIQ files for bankruptcy
Swedish mobile software company UIQ, jointly owned by Sony Ericsson and Motorola has filed for bankruptcy. What a bad start for this new year. If sources are to be believed 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 software developer, which is based in Sweden, began cutting staff six months ago after its owners decided to merge its software with the Symbian platform.
“There are no opportunities to create a new line of business in the current financial climate,” UIQ Chief Executive Johan Sandberg said.
Via.: Reuters