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Sony Ericsson is selling half of subsidiary UIQ Technology to competitor Motorola for an unspecified sum, it was announced today. Earlier this year, Sony Ericsson bought the company from Symbian for an undisclosed amount.

UIQ develops and manages the mobile platform, also called UIQ, Sony Ericsson uses for its smartphones, most recently with the new W960 Walkman and business-centric P1 phone models. Motorola also makes UIQ-based products, the latest being the Z8 slider.

The UIQ platform like the Nokia-owned S60 interface runs on top of the Symbian OS, 47.9 percent of which is owned by Nokia as well. To use a housing metaphor, Symbian is the foundation, plumbing, and electrical system; the interface (UIQ or S60) is the furnishings and appliances; and the hardware is the frame upon which a smartphone is built.

Between S60 and UIQ, the former is by far the more commonly-used, accounting for more smartphones worldwide than any other; mostly because it is, not surprisingly, Nokia's smartphone interface of choice.

Under the terms of their agreement, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will work together and jointly invest in the development of UIQ as an open user interface platform.

Both companies said they also agreed that UIQ will be vendor and chipset independent and be licensed on equal terms to all mobile device vendors. They're inviting others to participate in UIQ, either as shareholders or licensees.

Sony Ericsson president Miles Flint said this of the transaction: It "demonstrates the increasing importance of open operating systems for all handset vendors. By working together in a strong, mutually beneficial partnership, handset vendors can reduce development costs and help operators launch more consistent services with greater efficiency."

According to company Motorola senior VP Alain Mutricy, investing in UIQ will enable it "to bring feature-competitive multimedia devices to market." It’ll also enable them to meet regional preferences or specific customization requirements of individual mobile operators.

Available since 2002, UIQ allows vendors to develop smartphones with or without a touch screen. It also supports QWERTY and numeric keyboard configurations as well as finger input.