One topic to be discussed at 3GSM next week has already popped up, given today’s announcement by Sony Ericsson of the M600, a new UIQ 3 handset which they’re pitching as a UMTS messaging device. The lack of a camera and the support of multiple flavors of corporate email products makes it pretty clear they’re aiming the M600 at the enterprise market, but it’s also got some serious music chops, including the resurrection of Sony’s Mega Bass feature — something I’ve not seen since the days of my cassette Walkman in middle school. It’s a sharp-looking device, and the guys at All About Symbian have a good rundown of its features. The only one I’ll highlight is the new Memory Stick format it uses — the world needs another type of memory card like it needs a hole in the head (a personal bugbear, but still).

That’s not really what I want to focus on, though. The announcement of the device caught a lot of people by surprise, coming just a week before the industry (MobHappy included) will gather in Barcelona for the annual 3GSM World Congress confab — but perhaps SE was looking to own the news day rather than see the new device get lost in the shuffle. But the company issued another piece of news today, saying its previously announced P990 smartphone would be delayed until Q2, but that delay would be offset with the addition of a bunch of new software.

The reason for the delay? “We are getting strong operator interest in the M600. As a result we have accelerated development of the M600 and changed the timing of the P990’s introduction, to ensure both phones get to market as early as possible,” according to a Sony Ericsson product manager.

That’s a comment worthy of a politician, really, but given the history of UIQ 3, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something more. UIQ 3 was first brought to my attention at 3GSM in 2004, when Symbian talked about it as key to getting the operating system into mid-range, and indications from at least one Symbian licensee were that they planned to use it across an array of devices, making extensive use of its support for a one-handed UI, rather than just the stylus-based form such devices as the P900 and Motorola A1000. All we’ve seen since then are emulators running demos of the new UI, and the now-delayed P990.

I happen to really like UIQ and think it’s an excellent smartphone interface. That said, I’m not a big fan of having to use a stylus — hence my interest in some one-handed devices that use version 3 of the software. But it’s been two years since it was first announced. Even for the mobile industry, that’s a long time. Series 60 has progressed, and Windows Mobile’s made some significant improvements, but we’re still waiting on UIQ 3. So expect a lot of questions of UIQ, Symbian and Sony Ericsson at 3GSM along the lines of “Where are the phones?”