Windows Phone's Market Share Makes Me Sad

[tgp]

The part I find frustrating is that when I showed off the phone to my wife she said it was 'too confusing'. I really don't know what's so confusing about the interface.

I wouldn't say either that it's confusing. I will admit though that once you start using WP beyond talk/text/browsing, the learning curve becomes steep quickly. For example, the settings menu is a jumbled mess, with little apparent logic to how it's set up.

 

[N_LaRUE]

confusing = different

My wife says the same thing, she's an iPhone 5-er. Its very different from the respective norm, the icon grind setup.

As windows 8 becomes the standard windows OS, more people will become more familiar with the UI.

Depends if they bother with the Start screen. In Win8.1 you'll be able to bypass it and go into desktop. Also they brought back some semblance to the Start Menu or you can get the add-on app. So many people will still avoid the Metro interface if they can.

Let's face it, we're used to icons. They've been around a long time. The tile thing is a very big shift in thinking. I tend to think of the tiles as fancy icons myself and is an easier way of explaining it to people.

 

[chezm]

Depends if they bother with the Start screen. In Win8.1 you'll be able to bypass it and go into desktop. Also they brought back some semblance to the Start Menu or you can get the add-on app. So many people will still avoid the Metro interface if they can.

Let's face it, we're used to icons. They've been around a long time. The tile thing is a very big shift in thinking. I tend to think of the tiles as fancy icons myself and is an easier way of explaining it to people.

I havent used W8 as an OS yet, since the day I saw it I knew it was primarily intended for touch based devices so I waited for a proper touch screen machine (Pro 2 is what I'll be using). Would the general consumer go through the hassle to bypass on a touch screen type device?...thats the question

 

[hopmedic]

I was fortunate when they announced Win8, because I had already had a touchscreen laptop for almost a year when they made that announcement. So as soon as the developer preview was out, I installed it. So I've been using Win8 for about two years now, and love it. Yes, having a touchscreen makes a difference, but at the same time, I can go weeks without using it. Using a development environment on my PC, I'm primarily a desktop driver, but I don't have any problem using the start screen, though it's not often that I use Metro apps.

I do have a media PC hooked to my TV, though, since 2005, and it is running 8.0 right now with Windows Media Center (8.1 RTM on my laptop). While I don't watch much TV, the recent addition of the CBS app, and the ABC app that I just discovered, are nice. I've set up secondary tiles from the CBS app to the shows that I'm interested in, which are only a few. I haven't looked at the ABC app, yet, though. I can go a month at a time without even turning the TV on, so it may be a while before I try the ABC app. :wink: The only downside of W8 Media Center, though, is that the Media Center remote doesn't seem to work right when it's on the Start menu, so I just use a wireless keyboard (has a touchpad). What would be really nice is if there were a way to get a Wiimote to work with it, just pointing and highlighting the tile that I want to use. The Wii just collects dust, anyway. :wink:

 

[Rem97]

The part I find frustrating is that when I showed off the phone to my wife she said it was 'too confusing'. I really don't know what's so confusing about the interface.

My friend said the exact same thing! I was baffled, where's the confusing part. The UI is the easiest to use IMO out of the three main OSes. I mean, nothing can be more simple than having a completely flat UI.

 

[realwarder]

Were you looking for something like this?
View attachment 45232

You bring up a good point with "9-10% of what number?". Percentage wise, WP did great! In real numbers, it's not so impressive. If you have a penny and I give you another one, I doubled your net worth. However, it's still pretty much worthless.

I wouldn't say worthless. If you consider just how popular the iPhone is, to have 27% of the iPhone sales is actually pretty reasonable. For every 4 iPhones, a Windows Phone is being sold.

 

[tgp]

I wouldn't say worthless. If you consider just how popular the iPhone is, to have 27% of the iPhone sales is actually pretty reasonable. For every 4 iPhones, a Windows Phone is being sold.

I didn't mean that WP's numbers are worthless. I was more talking about using percentages in general. In my analogy, the second penny doubled the net worth, but 2? isn't much more useful than 1?. To say that WP sales rose by 77% YoY doesn't mean much, since the numbers are so small to begin with.

It is interesting to note that worldwide WP sales are roughly 1/4 of iPhone sales. Where are they? I virtually never see a WP in the wild, but I see iPhones all the time. But then, I live in the US where the difference is probably more like 15 to 1.

 

[david90531]

I have actually seen much more WPs these days. Both Nokia and HTC.