My first foray into the smartphone world was with my trusty SonyEricsson P800 (pictured on the left). Now this was not the first smartphone to ever exist, the Nokia 9000 and 9110, and the Ericsson R380w all predate the P800. The P800 is, what I consider, the first of the 'new' generation of smartphones. The P800 runs on Symbian UIQ and was introduced in January of 2002. Around the same time the Nokia 7650 was released running Symbian Series60. Things looked to be going very good initially, but we did not see a lot of UIQ phones come out, despite the fact the Ericsson licensed the OS. Nokia on the other hand started releasing S60 devices like there was no tomorrow! Fast forward to today, five years later, there are about 13 UIQ based devices, compared to about 53 running S60.
There are more MOAP phones than UIQ phones! Mind you, MOAP phone are only available in Japan!
So what is going on with UIQ? Not a lot of devices means that not a lot of software will be made for it, which makes the devices less appealing. Furthermore, I've noticed that all devices that run UIQ are GSM Triband! Come on! It's 2007 already! All phones, especially the phones you want to sell, should be at least GSM Quadband and HSDPA triband (2100/1900/850)!
Even if SonyEricsson opened stores in the US, like Nokia and Motorola have opened, who would buy a Triband phone? Even carriers like T-Mobile who use GSM 1900 can't fully use the phone because in recent years they have signed roaming agreements with GSM 850 providers! Time to get with the program Ericsson and SonyEricsson!