UIQ Technology was purchased by Sony Ericsson acquired from Symbian Ltd back in February 2007.

This is an important transaction that demonstrates the increasing importance of open operating systems for all handset vendors.” said Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. “By working together in a strong, mutually beneficial partnership, hand-set vendors can reduce development costs and help operators launch more consistent services with greater efficiency. At the same time, service providers and applications developers benefit from a more robust environment to create compelling end-to-end solutions which benefit consumers by enabling a more personalized user-experience”.

According to the agreement, UIQ will be vendor and chipset independent and will be licensed on equal terms to all mobile device vendors in the industry. As expected, the two partners already announced that other handset vendors were welcome to also become a shareholder.

Basically, the two companies hope they would eventually come up with a product capable to push Nokia’s Symbian-based S60 into a corner and take the lead on the market. Whether they’ll manage to pull it through or not, only time will tell.