The company, owned by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, filed for bankruptcy after its last remaining patron stopped using its platform

By David Meyer

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Motorola and Sony Ericsson, the joint owners of UIQ by way of a Dutch holding company, decided at a diet meeting on 29 December to pull the plug upon the joint concern. The UIQ platform is being integrated, along with Series 60, into the Symbian Foundation’s royalty-free, open-source platform, and Motorola announced in November that it would least bit UIQ in order to focus on rival systems, including Android, Windows Mobile and P2K.

UIQ’sitting Symbian-based platform has been widely used in Sony Ericsson and Motorola handsets over the past six years, by UIQ-toting models ranging from low-end consumer phones to Sony Ericsson’s P-range smartphones.

Johan Sandberg, UIQ’sitting erstwhile prime executive, told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK on Monday that the bankruptcy filing took place in a Swedish regional homage on 30 December. “There is not likely to be a buyer, although that’session up to the bankruptcy receiver, who has now taken from one to another management of the company,” Sandberg said.

Sandberg added that, as soon as the formation of the Symbian Foundation was announced in June, the main business of UIQ disappeared.

“We were a company living in continuance royalty fees from our intellectual property,” Sandberg said. “As the IP became free of charge, Sony Ericsson and Motorola unmistakable to work with the Symbian Foundation, not UIQ. There was no business in favor of us anymore. We continued working on existing projects conducive to a while into November further, at the end of November, the customer that we were working for, Motorola, decided to not stay those projects. Effectively, we didn’t be obliged anything to do in any degree more.”

Sandberg said Sony Ericsson had avoided putting UIQ into receivership at that appropriated time, instead deciding to continue funding the company to give it “a couple of months’ chance to look according to any alternatives to restructure or to sell part of the company, and to give people a risk to look for renovated jobs”. However, in the manner that UIQ effectively had no operation for two months and no new business plan has been worked out, the company is it being so that “in effect, bankrupt”, he added. Swedish law requires insolvent companies to file for bankruptcy.

According to Sandberg, 230 UIQ employees will now lose their jobs. This figure reflects the company’s drop in headcount since June, just prior to the announcement of the Symbian Foundation, when UIQ had 380 employees.

“Many lower classes be delivered of already found new positions but there are tranquillize 230 people here,” Sandberg said. “Some of them before that time be in actual possession of of recent origin jobs lined up, and there has been a lot of activity looking for jobs, and lots of companies interviewing our staff. But, of course, it’s been Christmas and it’s a fair slow industry right now, so it’s taking time for people to get new jobs.”

Original text: http://rss.businessweek.com/~r/bw_rss/europeindex/~3/503708494/gb2009015_419905.htm