The era of personal computers is coming to an end, and the future lies with the Smartphones. That is what Symbian is claiming, at least. This claim was reinforced lately when Sony Ericsson decided to acquire UIQ Technology, Symbian’s devision dedicated to user interfaces.

For those of you not familiar, Symbian is a consortium composed of the largest mobile manufacturers in the world (including Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic and Samsung) and it represents the largest rival for Microsoft in the mobile operating systems segment. The consortium was created in 1998 and it has already shipped more than 100 million Smartphones worldwide.

The Symbian interface that is produced by UIQ Technology is already being used in many handsets across the world, like the Nokia series 60 and 80.

Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian, affirmed that “desktops PCs are effectively a flatlining commodity (…) in five years’ time you’ll wonder why you need a PC at all”. He also defended that the quality of the experience you get from a smartphone will gradually increase until it will be good enough even for mainstream applications: “the idea of sitting at a desk to view a Web page is inherently annoying. (Phone screens) are small but the size of the display relative to the phone size is growing and the resolution of screens is growing very rapidly.”

Smartphones are certainly expanding throughout the mobile industry. Until a couple of years ago they were targeted exclusively at executives and businessmen that needed applications such as email, contact list and web browsing. The latest phones, however, and starting to appeal to normal consumers that want to improve their interaction with mobile devices. But will this be enough to out place personal computers?