Motorola has decided touch screens might just be a bigger part of its future. It bought 50% of Sony Ericsson's stake in UIQ, which is based on Symbian, the platform behind Sony Ericsson's touch screen smartphones.Symbian shared the news today that Motorola and Sony Ericsson struck an agreement for Motorola to purchase 50% of Sony Ericsson's ownership of UI Holdings, the parent company of UIQ. Sony Ericsson bases its smartphones, such as the P1, on UIQ, which uses Symbian's code as its core. Nokia also uses Symbian as the platform beneath its S60 user interface, and many FOMA phones for NTT DoCoMo's network in Japan are based on Symbian. Symbian currently accounts for about three-quarters of the world's smartphones.

Both Motorola and Sony Ericsson agreed to develop the platform together, and will continue to license it out "on equal terms to all mobile device vendors in the industry." That means other handset vendors who want to use UIQ won't be locked out.

One interesting thing of note that is that UIQ is the power behind Sony Ericsson's touch screen devices. As we all know, touch screens are on the verge of becoming the new handset design rage. For Motorola to buy into this technology could help it develop touch screen-based devices, which it has openly said it is working on, to market.

This is not Motorola's first dance with Symbian. The "media monster" that Motorola released over the summer (the Z8) is a UIQ-based feature phone. UIQ's code base greatly simplifies customization for handset vendors, operators and third-party developers. Whether or not Motorola wii definitively produce any phones in the future that are based on Symbian isn't known. But it can certainly use all the help it can get to cut down on R&D costs. Any platform that is easier to develop around could help lower Motorola's costs and possibly even speed time to market for certain products.