I meet up with Elisabet Melin, Vice President of Marketing at UIQ when I was in Budapest. Elisabet was very easy to talk with and gave me some insights on how the business and UIQ look upon the future.

About Elisabet

Elisabet started her career as a research assistant at the Blekinge Institute of Technology where she also received her Masters Degree in Computer Science. Back in 1998 she joined Ericsson Mobile Communications where she was involved with early Bluetooth research. Later Elisabet joined a project between Ericsson and Psion which resulted in what came to be known as the UIQ user interface. In April of 2000 Elisabet was appointed Product Manager for UIQ, two years later she took on the role as Head of Marketing and Sales. Today Elisabet holds the title Vice President of Marketing.

About UIQ

UIQ is basically a user interface platform. A user interface is the software which allows the user to interacts with the device. Some people call this the menus, but it’s really much more than only the menus. A user interface, UI, is also much more about the user experience than about menus. Good user interfaces are easy to learn and understand, hopefully intuitive. The UIQ user interface is based on top of the Symbian operating system.

Our conversation

We started our conversation with some fast updates on where UIQ is today. Elisabet explained how Sony Ericsson bought UIQ in February and how Motorola is planning to join the family. UIQ now has lots of funds which is also why they’ve been growing from 150 persons to 350 persons, all in 6 months.

I tried to ask Elisabet about Motorola’s engagement with other platforms such as Linux and Windows Mobile. Elisabet of course could not give me any answers on Motorola’s strategies, however she felt Motorola was making a big undertaking with UIQ considering they’ve bought half the company and felt they have great interest in their platform. There was no doubt she was convinced Motorola would fulfill whatever engagements they’d agreed on with UIQ. As lots of company’s in the industry, UIQ was excited about 2008. To me it seems everybody’s moving in the heavy artillery in 2008, trying to bit a bite of the smartphone pie. Elisabet described how several new UIQ devices will be release in 2008 but did not talk about details such as functionality or models. There’s of course devices both from Sony Ericsson and Motorola and I’m sure we’ll see the Z10 from Motorola next year.

Having no luck with the juice details on new devices we soon moved on to discuss new innovative input systems such as multi touch screens and tactile feedback. I explained how I’d read about Nokia developing a super cool tactile feedback system giving the user the sensation of pressing real ‘hard’ buttons. Curious as I am I asked Elisabet about how UIQ is working with tactile feedback and if such features will be supported by the platform. She explained UIQ is a flexible platform with functionality to work with a lot of different input systems such as touchscreens, voice recognition and hard buttons. UIQ does not make any special features but if the users demand advanced tactile feedback, it’s very possible UIQ will deliver this. It’s also possible for manufacturers and the ecosystem to develop these special features utilizing some of the flexibility with UIQ. User input in UIQ is handled by a command system, where developers can link different actions with different commands and in this way easily control how the phone should behave. I was not entirely convinced by this explanation knowing the secret to the sensation lies in the timing, and that the command system as it works today in no way can guarantee the exact timing necessary to pull this off.

There was also the issue with rapid growth, considering UIQ’s been growing over 230% in merely 6 months I couldn’t not help to ask what all these new people do. The answer was simple - they work with many different things such as operator compliance and the platform itself maintaining old releases and developing new functionality for coming releases. Elisabet explained it’s not all about releasing new versions but also maintaining older active releases. The more active releases you’ll have, the more people you’ll need to maintain your releases. It’s about continuing to develop the platform to meet the demands from manufacturers and operators. UIQ is still a small company compared to the competition and will continue to grow throughout 2008 and perhaps in 2009, next step will be to hire developers in Budapest where UIQ has a good relationship with the University.

Of course my main concerns were those regarding the iPhone OS X, Google’s Android platform, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and the ever lasting Linux choice. All being rivals to the UIQ platform I asked Elisabet how they were planning to face these threats. She quickly replied how Sony Ericsson and Motorola, being among the top five manufacturers in the world, choose UIQ because of it’s flexibility and the big ecosystem. The big ecosystem around Symbian (being the leading OS for smartphones, holding over 70% of the smartphone market) seems to be a key factor in UIQ’s road to success. This also means UIQ depends on how successful the Symbian OS will be in the future and how they’ll adapt to the new market.

I could not resist to ask Elisabet about cutting the bonds with Symbian and running a pure Linux kernel instead. Elisabet of course denied this saying UIQ had no such plans at the moment (if they would have, she would hardly tell me about it). On the contrary, UIQ hopes to use Symbian’s leverage and the huge ecosystem around Symbian to grow. Elisabet explained how it’s easier to port applications between S60 and UIQ compared to porting applications between S60 and Windows Mobile, being clearly a bigger investment. Elisabet also stressed how the market is growing and that it was exciting with new merging platforms will stir the pot and bring new innovations and ideas to the business.