Poll 004 Results: What OS is on your primary mobile phone?

[brad jones]

I will admit, the results on this one surprised me. What do you think?

[dilettante]

I agree. It is really hard to imagine that many people are using a Windows Phone. Do you think they are lying or something? Maybe just not a large enough sample?

[jmcilhinney]

I agree. It is really hard to imagine that many people are using a Windows Phone. Do you think they are lying or something? Maybe just not a large enough sample?

Maybe Windows Phone is better than you want to believe it is. I think that, with the release of WP8.1, it is now the equal of iOS or Android as an OS. There is still obviously a shortfall in the availability of apps but that may well change. If the greater number of OEMs that Microsoft has signed up leads to an increased number of handsets available in a greater number of markets, that would likely lead to an increase in adoption, which would lead to an increase in app availability, which would lead to an increase in adoption and so on. Let's not underestimate the effect that being able to have the same experience, including apps, on a phone, tablet and PC could have. I can definitely see WP overtaking iOS in the not too distant future. Hauling in Android would be a far greater feat but not beyond the bounds of possibility in time. Even if they don't become #1 though, they will still be a success. Noone is calling Apple a failure even though iOS usage trails Android by a factor of five. Microsoft is in it for the long haul.

I can believe the result. The numbers don't agree with the worldwide usage figures but there are a lot of .NET developers using this site so I would expect that they would have a higher usage rate of WP than the norm.

[dilettante]

Well I had meant to add a winky smiley there.

Apple's market seems pretty entrenched and I suspect it is less about them losing market volume than it is more people moving to "smart phones" (ugh, what an ugly term) who can't justify Apple prices. Market share would drop then since the pie is growing, just not their slice of it so much.

In the end it is seldom about a product being good as long as it is good enough. Microsoft's biggest problem is they basically left the market when they killed Windows Mobile, and left the field open to others. Since then the replacement products have seen some radical churn. So your bank and everyone else is far less likely to start making applications for "Windows" based phones.

There may be more stability from here on... though isn't there a big "reboot" going on right now to yet another new "universal apps" concept?

[jmcilhinney]

There may be more stability from here on... though isn't there a big "reboot" going on right now to yet another new "universal apps" concept?

More stability, yes. The fact that WP7 devices couldn't be upgraded to WP8 was a sticking point but WP7 apps have continued to work for the most part and WP8 apps will have all work on WP8.1 too. The concept of universal apps is not really a "reboot". Any app that isn't universal will continue to work as before without change and the technologies used to create universal apps are the same as before, i.e. XAML or HTML/JavaScript. It's just that a large proportion of the API available to a WP app and a WRT/W8 app is now common so new apps can be written to target both using mostly common code.

It's the first major step to "One Windows" but, even when that arrives, writing apps for multiple devices won't really change much. The parts of universal apps now that are different for different platforms comes down almost exclusively to hardware included in a phone and not in other devices and that will be the same even when the OSes converge. I believe that writing an app for iPhone differs slightly to writing an app for iPad and I think that creating a universal app for Windows is much like that except maybe easier because you can use a single VS solution.

[Nightwalker83]

Damn, I didn't realize this poll was up I would have voted for iOS and before that Android.

[brad jones]

The poll is on microsoft-centric forums, so WP being higher than expected isn't surprising. I use a Windows Phone (just bumped it up to 8.1). I like the phone and WP. The issue I run into is missing apps. That's my only legitimate complaint. I prefer the OS over Android; however, missing key apps not enough to override the better OS.

What surprised me about the poll was how high Android was, especially relative ti iOS.

[jmcilhinney]

The poll is on microsoft-centric forums, so WP being higher than expected isn't surprising. I use a Windows Phone (just bumped it up to 8.1). I like the phone and WP. The issue I run into is missing apps. That's my only legitimate complaint. I prefer the OS over Android; however, missing key apps not enough to override the better OS.

I decided to get a Windows Phone because I wanted to make the most of my existing development skills with Microsoft technologies. I would imagine that there would be a fair number of folks on this site in the same boat. I have never used an iPhone in anger but I have used an Android phone for a while. I was not a big fan, although I will admit that I didn't really use it long enough to get properly acquainted with it. I took to Windows Phone straight off, although I had already been using Windows 8/8.1 on a desktop and a touchscreen for a while and was already au fait with the tiled UI.

What surprised me about the poll was how high Android was, especially relative ti iOS.

I'm not surprised. It's my understanding that Android's worldwide market share is above 70% while iOS has about 13%. It actually looks like that survey is skewed towards iOS in a head-to-head with Android. It really just looks like 10% share was taken off Android and plonked onto Windows Phone.

From what I've seen and experienced, I think that Windows Phone is a superior OS to iOS or Android in principle, although it has been missing some features that the others have. You'd expect that though, because it arrived on the scene much later. Microsoft has caught up quite quickly though. Windows Phone 8.1 basically puts it on par with iOS and Android, with each having basically the same major features and a few little tricks of their own. The test for Microsoft now that they have caught up will be to add more innovative features of their own that people will then say that iOS and Android lack. I think that they've done everything they can up to now to boost adoption and app development.

[RhinoBull]

...It's my understanding that Android's worldwide market share is above 70% while iOS has about 13%. It actually looks like that survey is skewed towards iOS in a head-to-head with Android. It really just looks like 10% share was taken off Android and plonked onto Windows Phone.....

This poll has no value at all imho. I also wonder where in the world did you get that 13% from?
For more accurate web analytics go to NetMarketShare or perhaps StatCounter. Here is mobile OS share report from NMS - iOS has more than half:

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operat...=8&qpcustomd=1

Either site's counters are based on millions of unique visitors although (and as far as I know) NetMarketShare does not offer detailed breakdowns in that respect.

[jmcilhinney]

This poll has no value at all imho. I also wonder where in the world did you get that 13% from?
For more accurate web analytics go to NetMarketShare or perhaps StatCounter. Here is mobile OS share report from NMS - iOS has more than half:

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operat...=8&qpcustomd=1

Either site's counters are based on millions of unique visitors although (and as far as I know) NetMarketShare does not offer detailed breakdowns in that respect.

I realise that the figure I quoted was based on recent smartphone sales as opposed to total number of users, so still relevant but not as much overall I guess. Those who answered this poll are likely to be recent smartphone purchasers, so that could explain why it looks more like what I saw than what you posted. It would still be a relatively small sample size though, and not really representative of the population as a whole. Still, it never claimed to be definitive.

[brad jones]

Correct in saying the poll has limited value. Even so there is some value in that it reflects a slice of the market. The same however could be said of amy survey. Of course it is new sales that will tell where things are going even more so than current market share. In that case, Android tends to be leading....

[RhinoBull]

Let's face the reality:
- most of iOS users will stay with it for years to come - it's truly best mobile OS currently available whether you like or not
- WP has very limited users base and if Nokia miraculously survives then maybe WP's market share will reach 2% globally
- as far as Android goes - yes it's customizable but not as stable as iOS so don't expect huge turn around
- there is a fare number of users who "move" from iOS to Android and vice versa so market share will vary depending on these migrations but avg share will likely to stay within current %%.

Mobile OS market share has stabilized right now (at least it looks this way based on various reports) so I would be surprised if it's changed drastically.