Richard: What is changing with UIQ support under the new arrangements?

Peter: The new arrangement will see generic platform support for UIQ 3, and future releases, provided by UIQ Technology. Sony Ericsson will continue supporting their various UIQ handsets and any device specific functionality that they offer developers. In addition, Sony Ericsson will continue to support the existing 2.0 and 2.1 releases of UIQ, used in the P800, P900 and P910. So in the future if developers have a generic UIQ question they will come to UIQ Technology, but for device specific support and information go to Sony Ericsson or other UIQ licensees.

Richard: Why did Sony Ericsson provide UIQ support in the first place? Given there are other UIQ licensees building devices it always seemed a little odd.

Ulf: Yes, we have been more or less supporting developers working with Motorola and BenQ, as well as those developing for Sony Ericsson. We took on this support because we realized that we had to. It was the key to breathing life into the UIQ developer community. Certainly some licensees questioned what we were doing. We are competitors, but a strong UIQ developer community serves us as much as the other licensees. This is what we have been doing for some three years now. However, the long term plan has always been to transfer support for UIQ to UIQ Technology and this is what we are doing now. Sony Ericsson Developer World will however continue supporting MIDP Java along with CDC Java, which is a Sony Ericsson extension to UIQ. Even so, if or when CDC becomes standard parts of the platform we would happily transfer support to UIQ. Not only because it saves us the cost burden, but because the more common APIs that are available to developers, the stronger the UIQ platform will be.

Peter: Historical reasons also explain why Sony Ericsson ended up taking on the generic UIQ support. The company came from Ericsson who had Ericsson Mobility World and the infrastructure to support developers. So they could quickly get an operation up and running, something UIQ Technology could not do at the time.

Ulf: This change is simply a natural next step in UIQ developer support. However, Sony Ericsson Developer World offers tools to developers to access features across all our phones, not only Symbian OS based smartphones but the Java ME based mass-market phones, as well as content development features on low-end phones. With themes, for example, we have a very popular tool called Themes Creator that lets developers create themes for all our phones. Equally services, such as access to prototype devices, have to stay with us.

Richard: How are the new arrangements being resourced, has there been any exchange of personnel?

Ulf: No. Our developer support staff is still needed within Sony Ericsson Developer World. There are still lots of technologies where developers need advanced knowledge. It's just a matter of shifting focus.

Our support staff are covering a growing number of phones in the Sony Ericsson portfolio. These phones offer developers a diversity of programming options: C++, Java MIDP, Mobile Java 3D, wireless messaging, browsing, and SVG-t/Flash to name just a few. At the same time they are supporting a greater diversity of applications, for business & productivity, games, music, imaging, location based services and many more.

All this technology can be quite tricky. Take location based services, where there are endless possibilities for the things that can be linked to a location; this type of development means our developer support is getting more complex. The enterprise world is growing quite quickly too, with email and wireless access to corporate applications. So there is going to be a huge demand for more advanced support services in very specific areas and that is where our support staff will be working.

Richard: As UIQ Technology have not been able to use staff from Sony Ericsson how has it set up the developer support organization, or has it been outsourced?

Peter: We have set up a dedicated team of experienced UIQ Technology staff to manage developer support, so it is all done in-house. We have been working to create the service for over a year, to make sure the transition will work as smoothly as possible for developers.

Richard: Have you been trialing the service?

Peter: We have been doing trials regarding the SDK and its support with a number of developers. Both developers who need to have applications available at device launch, but also developers who have previously shown an ability to give high quality feedback on alpha and early beta SDKs.

Richard: Will UIQ Technology be offering a premium service, similar to Sony Ericsson's Core program?

Peter: We are certainly looking at offering premium services with professional support as well as supporting developers in marketing and capitalizing on their work. That said, we are currently focusing primarily on ensuring all free technology support such as tools, SDK, documentation and self-help support are in really good shape before we expand the program into more commercial areas as well.

Richard: A couple of years ago there was a joint announcement about bringing UIQ and Series 60 closer together. Do you cooperate with Forum Nokia in terms of materials and the type of information that is being provided?

Peter: There are a number of internal forums where we discuss API documentation or tools issues common to Symbian OS. The announcement you are thinking of was about tools alignment. At the time, developers could only use Visual Studio for Series 60 and CodeWarrior for UIQ. So the first step was to make sure that both those tools worked for both platforms, so developers didn't have to switch tools when wanting to support both platforms.

Ulf: I think we have a long term understanding of where we are heading and we are taking small step all the time. At one time we used Symbian OS v7.0 while Nokia was on 7.0s. They were based on different code which could cause developers issues moving between platforms. Now we are both on Symbian v9 which will make life easier for developers. So we are progressing, perhaps not as quickly as some would like, but we are very definitely going in the right direction through joint industry efforts.

For Java developers the P990, I believe, supports all the APIs that are available in MIDP in Series 60. Sony Ericsson has also decided to make the developer's life easier by supporting the Nokia UI API, so older Series 60 MIDP applications should run on P990.

Richard: Do you feel the new arrangement provides any advantages for developers?

Ulf: For developers who may be working with other handset manufacturers' UIQ phones it will make a big difference. It was probably confusing for them that they came to Sony Ericsson Developer World for general UIQ support and SDKs. Going to UIQ Technology for UIQ support will be more natural.

Richard: How much of the motivation for the move was due to the fact that current and future UIQ licensees might be smaller volume device manufactures, who might not have the resources to create their own support programs?

Peter: The main reason why Sony Ericsson Developer World took on the support originally was that they also had the first UIQ smartphone. They took on the challenge of being on the leading edge. In the future we fully expect to see a wider range of licensees on UIQ 3, because the platform can support so many more device styles. That is likely to mean that licensees will be of various sizes and have differing abilities to support developers.

So while Sony Ericsson Developer World is extremely capable of supporting their developers, it may be that some licensees do not have that capability. It then makes sense for UIQ Technology to help out. It will now be easier for licensees to send their developers to us for device specific help as well.

Richard: This seems to imply you would also provide outsourced support for some of your smaller licensees.

Peter: We would consider it on a case by case basis, we haven't seen that yet but there is the ability to do it.

Richard: Ulf, you have already mentioned some of the ways in which your support resources will be redeployed after this move. Is there anything else they will be doing?

Ulf: The launch of the P990 means we have to help our developers migrate from UIQ 2 to UIQ 3. There is some work involved in this. We also believe there will be more developers coming to UIQ and these developers will be creating increasingly complex applications. So there is much for our support staff to do.

We are also working more and more with the enterprise community. Sony Ericsson has a Business Partner Program which helps them go to market, but they also need developer support. These developers often need to react quickly to new requirements and Sony Ericsson Developer World is here to help them.

Richard: As Peter mentioned Sony Ericsson where the first with a UIQ phone, might you be the first with the new styles possible with UIQ 3?

Ulf: We have said for a number of years that Sony Ericsson's intention is to work towards migrating Symbian OS and UIQ down into its mid-range offerings. That is still the strategy. As technology improves and becomes more of a mass-market phenomenon the opportunities are growing. QVGA can be provided in physically smaller screens, chipsets are still getting smaller and cheaper, as is memory and we have options for single processor devices. The cost penalty for advanced Symbian OS based phones is decreasing, but for more details you will have to watch out for future announcements.

The new UIQ developer support site can be accessed at developer.uiq.com and the UIQ 3 SDK can now be downloaded from developer.uiq.com/downloads/sdk.

Sony Ericsson P990 specific extensions and beta APIs will be available from Sony Ericsson Developer World, at www.sonyericsson.com/developer/symbian, during Q4 2005. The Sony Ericsson extension package will include a Vibration API and Bluetooth Keyboard API, as well as emulator components such as fonts and skins.

Sony Ericsson Developer World will also publish a specific CDC SDK for Java applications development in Q4 2005. CLDC will be supported by a new version of the existing Sony Ericsson SDK for the Java ME Platform, which will be published shortly at www.sonyericsson.com/developer/java.