Russell Beattie has an interesting take on what Nokia/Symbian needs to do to compete against Microsoft in the Enterprise Mobile space. If I can summarise, basically he says that where Symbian currently falls down is in the development tools area. They have C++ API’s, and GNU-based tool chains, but need a good RAD tool to really make development accessible.

Nothing terribly controversial there I should think. However, my take is that it’s not C++ that is unapproachable for your average, line-of-business developer, but the C++ API’s into Symbian.

I’m hesitant to launch into a Borland Marketing pitch here, but, in my opinion, one of the "sleeper" features of C++BuilderX 1.5 Mobile Edition are the components which wrap the Symbian API’s. They cover all sorts of areas such as accessing Address Book functionality, dealing with Bluetooth, accessing the camera on your phone etc. This combined with the RAD Form Designer, goes a long way to making Symbian development as approachable as, say, Delphi and VB did for Windows.