Satoshi Nakajima, the lead architect for Windows 95 and 98 as well as the project lead on Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0 at Microsoft, hooked up with a Mac a couple years ago and hasn't looked back at a PC since. He recently launched an iPhone software company and rolled out the first product, Photoshare, a photo sharing program for the iPhone. Sigh. I really want an iPhone now. Although what I would be really stoked about would be something like an iPhone Nano or Mini (You know, what with my skinny jeans and all).
Wired sat down with Nakajima for an interesting Q&A:
Were there other aspects of developing for iPhone that you found attractive? The rest of the wireless world is so fragmented. We have 8 years of experience planning a business in mobile. I know that it’s so difficult to make money in the regular cell phone market because of this fragmentation, and the marketing costs, the channel costs of business development with wireless operators and then the porting costs to individual hardware way exceed the revenue, so a lot of developers lose money. With iPhone, it’s very unique because it’s one hardware, one channel, so the costs of distribution and the costs of developing for the hardware is a lot lower. And the addressable market is right now 6 million and its going to be 10 million by the end of the year, which is big enough for us.
So you’re OK with Apple’s 30% AppStore fee? I think that’s a fair number. A lot of people are complaining about that but compared to the other costs you’d have to bear to market for multiple hardware and also the complexity of provisioning for a lot of wireless operators are costs you avoid with iPhone, because it’s a one-time cost. So I think it’s fair, yes.
Nakajima, who admits that Steve Jobs's "reality distortion power is amazing," has completely swallowed the Apple Kool-Aid.
Read more here.