The biggest mistake, one that has been mentioned before, is the interaction between the licensees and the Symbian Operating System. The drive to differentiate the handsets resulted in a fragmentation that caused headaches for years; “The right thing to do to make Symbian stronger and more successful would have been to have the equivalent of Series 60 in Symbian – which is what Pearl was. But Motorola and Nokia ultimately couldn't agree on the spec” Davies is quoted as saying.
He’s also casting a critical eye on the choices of developer languages available. As EPOC transitioned to Symbian, the choices available were C++ and Java MID, with the BASIC like OPL for hobby developers clinging bravely on for another year or two. "We were always a bit sniffy about OPL…Given my time again, I'd make it more powerful. There's a success story there; people could program for it very easily and it abstracted the changes underneath” and “…unfortunately there was this dumbing-down of Java to MIDP. The idea was that Java could do more in the native environment. Java as a language has never had much wrong with it, it's OK. But the particular platforms like MIDP were constrained…”
Davies is happy with other areas of development, specifically in the API support available over the range of handsets. “The key thing was API compatibility – and we succeeded on that. We got far more disciplined in our processes, and as much as not, that was for [the benefit of] Series 60 and UIQ. That was a big thing”.
You can read the full interview over on The Register.