UIQ Fast Track: Keynotes recap

Well folks here I am sitting at the Hilton’s lobby writing you about all the things I’ve heard today in the keynote presentations at the UIQ Fast Track.

Before I start, I would like to mention that the atmosphere here is great. People are quite excited about the prospect of the platform and there are many representatives from software development companies eagerly waiting to pitch anyone who’s interested.

Back to keynote…

First Naresh Chouhan, Head of Developer Programs at UIQ, welcomed us, briefly going through the event’s agenda and joking about how he hate BlackBerrys. Yeah, they are great for some things, but for other… you better get something more powerful.

Following him, Elisabet Melin - VP of UIQ’s marketing, introduced the platform and the Fast Track developer events. According to her, the 4th Fast Track event is attended by 150 people from 50 companies and from 20 countries. Naturally, most of the attendants are from Hungary, where UIQ has its office. Their other office is in London, and they are headquartered is in Ronneby, Southern Sweden. In total, UIQ employs 350 people.

She also talked about UIQ Technology — they are “user interface and framework provider” which DOESN’T want to compete with the members of its ecosystem by making applications (unlike S60?).

Next in line was Abbas Sumar, Application Acquisition Manager at Sony Ericsson. He talked about the P1i’s successful launch and the opportunity for developers. According to Abbas, on average over 40% of P1i users download an application to their smartphones during the first month. Then he went further praising UIQ and even calling it the “platform of the first,” while citing that it’s the UIQ powered device that was the first touchscreen-equipped that also supported handwriting recognition smartphone (Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) P800), first GPS-equipped smartphone (Motorola (NYSE: MOT) A920), and the first WiFi-enabled smartphone.

The Sony Ericsson’s just-about-to-be-launched W960i Walkman smartphone was also one of the topics of his presentation. He argued the UIQ devices are made for both business AND fun, naturally illustrating the latter with the W960i. We had a chance to see TrackID, the new Walkman UI and even some gaming demonstrated…

UIQ’s second shareholder, Motorola, also sent its representative to talk about Moto’s UIQ plans. Paul D. Leeper, director of Ecosystem and Market Development, talked about various market challenges for developers, stating Motorola we’ll be there to help interested companies make/port apps to Z8 and other upcoming Moto UIQ-based smartphones.

Interesting stat he brought was that at every second, 4 new babies are born on Earth, while at the same time 32 phones are sold. Can you illustrate THE opportunity better?

At the end of the keynote presentation, we saw Naresh Chouhan again, who teased us about the upcoming phones without revealing much about it — we saw 5 silhouettes on one slide. He did however, said that UIQ is preparing central application directory which will be open to all companies and individuals who develop for the platform. Nice!

And that’s it for the keynotes. While I’m writing this, Commercial, Developer and Advanced Development tracks are on their way. Stay tuned as we bring you more…