Look. I don't hate Windows Phone, my girlfriend has the HTC 8X and adores it. With the latest set of big apps ported (like Instagram and Snapchat), it's quite nice. The interface is good, and fast on modest hardware. The browser is pretty meh. PIM functionality is good, as you'd expect from Windows Mobiles pedigree.
But comparing an entire ecosystem of phones (with one of the biggest sellers being the $100 Nokia 520) with iPhones limited range, is silly. Try again when Apple release a true current gen budget smartphone perhaps. I've never understood why we as consumers care about this stuff -- they're businesses for christs sake, and they make billions of dollars of us. Why do we care if one big business does better than their competitors? Why do we defend them? :/
Because as developers, you don't develop for a specific piece of mobile hardware, you develop for an OS.
If Windows Phone is gaining ground in markets you care about, you'd best care about it, regardless of the specific hardware being talked about. We're comparing ecosystems here, not hardware. We can compare "Windows Phone Phones vs iOS phones" if that makes you feel more comfortable.
Hey, yeah I agree with you that as developers it matters. Sorry, my post was influenced by another discussion recently about this topic; I was looking at it from a consumer perspective.
Now there are some arguments to be made as to why consumers would care as well, but in my experience those arguments might hold true for people like us on HN but not for your average commenter on The Verge (for example).
Well, it matters for consumers too - ecosystem familiarity and lock-in is a big deal. If I buy a bunch of apps in one ecosystem, I have a sunk cost that's going to keep me in that ecosystem. Another ecosystem gaining dominance might mean any number of things as to how I use the device.
Consider, for example, if Chile becomes dominated by the Windows Phone. All your good useful local apps - your local versions of Yelps, Zagats, OpenTables, etc - are going to go Windows Phone first. The services that matter most in the community you're in are going to go where the marketshare is - and as an iPhone user, you might be left waiting to catch up.
Consumers care if one business does better than the other because of two reasons, pride and long-term self-interest.
1) Everyone prefers to be on the winning or "proven-right" side. It's hard to be happy with your otherwise decent Blackberry if your peers increasingly don't use it, know anything about it, or disparage it.
2) There is also a long-term self-interested component that seeks more than simply trying to fit in. It goes like this - the more cool your chosen device/platform/game is the more users it attracts, the more users it attracts the more money is flowing through the system, and ultimately more money means more human resources are spent on patching/re-releasing your favorite product so that it can be improved and stay reliable in the long-term. And if it's a proprietary messaging system or a multiplayer game, having more users in the system is in itself also a boon to the end-user experience.
>With the latest set of big apps ported (like Instagram and Snapchat), it's quite nice.
It's not only about the big apps. The 'download app from' in advertisement footers are only referring to the App Store and Google Play. By choosing an iPhone or an Android consumers know for sure that they are able to download and use any app, not just the big ones.
But comparing an entire ecosystem of phones (with one of the biggest sellers being the $100 Nokia 520) with iPhones limited range, is silly. Try again when Apple release a true current gen budget smartphone perhaps. I've never understood why we as consumers care about this stuff -- they're businesses for christs sake, and they make billions of dollars of us. Why do we care if one big business does better than their competitors? Why do we defend them? :/