This wasn’t entirely unexpected, given Nokia’s purchase of Symbian. Staff at UIQ Technology, the Symbian-based mobile application development platform and graphical interface, were warned that they were facing layoffs following the decision by its co-owners Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) to stop using its software. Allaboutsymbian.com reports that following the company’s board meeting last Wednesday, it was feared that UIQ would have to cease operations immediately. Sony Ericsson, however, has stepped in and will fund the company on a month-by-month basis to allow the company to figure out its options.

The Symbian Foundation is supposed to take the best pieces from the various interfaces UIQ, MOAP, and S60 and combine them into a single interface layer, but as the Register notes, what this really means is “co-opting interesting features into the next version of S60 - leaving MOAP and UIQ developers in the cold.”