Five Questions With: Jonathan Stark

"THE MOBILE Web represents a huge opportunity for most organizations, but device fragmentation is a big issue," said Jonathan Stark. /

Jonathan Stark is an Internet consultant who runs an eponymous Providence-based firm, Jonathan Stark Consulting Inc., and has just published a new book, “Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript” (O’Reilly, $29.99). He talked with Providence Business News about his book and the mobile Web.

PBN: Your new book has come out in an electronic edition and will be available in print in a few months. What led you to write it?

STARK: It was a case of scratching my own itch. The iPhone is a wonderful device that is changing people’s lives, and I wanted to write apps for it. However, I didn’t want to spend months learning how to write apps “the Apple way” (with Cocoa and Objective-C) when I already know how to write apps for the Web. I couldn’t find a resource that connected all the dots, so I decided to write one.

Right around that time, I met Brian Jepson through Providence Geeks. Brian is a senior editor with O’Reilly Media, so I ran the idea by him and he liked it. We exchanged a few e-mails and got to work.

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PBN: Did anything surprise you as you worked on the book?

STARK: The thing that took me by surprise was the high level of interest. The week the book was announced, companies from all over the world started getting in touch with me – completely unsolicited. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when the book is actually available in stores. I feel like I’m getting sucked up into a tornado.

PBN: One issued faced by mobile software developers is that there is limited standardization across different types of phones, which makes it too expensive to create a program that works for any phone. How are developers dealing with that, and do you see it changing anytime soon?

STARK: The mobile Web represents a huge opportunity for most organizations, but device fragmentation is a big issue. It’s simply too expensive to develop, test, deliver and support multiple versions of your application. The compromise is to write one version that works well enough for the largest segment of target customers.

My consulting clients and I work together to define exactly what that means for their particular cases. Every situation is different, but often the best approach is to write the app with Web-standard technologies.

PBN: This fall we’ve had Motorola, Verizon and Google release their new Droid phone, which they explicitly cast as a direct competitor to the iPhone. Do you see the iPhone as the dominant smartphone at this point?

STARK: I think it’s too soon to say that iPhone is dominating the smartphone market. An August 2009 Gartner report puts Apple at No. 3 in smartphone sales, behind Nokia and Research In Motion, which makes BlackBerrys. In overall mobile-phone market sales, Apple isn’t even in the top five.

That being said, it’s safe to say that Apple has set a new standard and is poised to dominate the category. In that context, I don’t see an iPhone killer on the horizon for two reasons: one, Apple is the only phone vendor who is creating both their hardware and software; and two, Apple has a huge head start on the competition.

PBN: In a similar vein, what do you think the outlooks are for Google’s Android operating system and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile?

STARK: Android is going to be a big deal, but maybe not on smartphones. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see Android running all sorts of personal appliances in the next five years or so.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say Singer wanted to release a sewing machine that would automatically update the user’s Facebook page in real-time as she works on her granddaughter’s quilt. In this case, Android would be an obvious choice for the software. Why? Because it’s a free operating system that runs on weak hardware, and supports location-based services and a variety of communication protocols. If you multiply this scenario by every appliance in your home, you have a big deal.

Windows Mobile is another story. I think Microsoft will continue to be relevant in the way that IBM is relevant – they will be a big company supporting legacy software that runs lots of mission-critical enterprise systems. However, you will not see innovation from Microsoft in mobile; Microsoft is too big and the mobile market is changing too quickly. •

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