Jen Quinlan

Although WinMo phones represent a small market share, its Metro UI is gaining momentum.

As of September 2011, 2-in-5 Americans own a smartphone according to Neilson. Of that smartphone audience, only 7% have a WinMo phone - trailing Android 40%, Apple iOS 28%, and RIM Blackberry 19%.

Despite market share numbers, one of the most innovative aspects of the WinMo phone experience is its Metro UI - a series of tiles that present real-time updates of content pulled from users’ apps like weather updates, Facebook notifications, etc.

In the desktop / tablet world, Microsoft announced Windows 8 will pull from the WinMo UI experience. Win8 will feature a new start screen that is a wild departure from the current desktop icons and horizontal navigation bar with start button to launch menu. Win8 will leverage the WinMo phone Metro UI that includes a “personal mosaic of tiles” that pull content from users’ applications and data feeds. Watch video on YouTube here by the Microsoft design team explaining key features.

“The Start screen is not just a replacement for the Start menu—it is designed to be a great launcher and switcher of apps, a place that is alive with notifications, customizable, powerful, and efficient. It brings together a set of solutions that today are disparate and poorly integrated.”
Alice Steinglass, Microsoft, Core Experience Evolved Team

In September, Microsoft also released the SDK (software developers’ kit) for language EN. To read more about the project, visit their Building Windows 8 blog or see Tech Radar’s detailed review of key features.

Feedback and reviews have been mixed:

Metro’s informative tiles are pretty nice for keeping you up on emails, new tweets, the weather, upcoming calendar events, and so on—it actually makes a cool screensaver, of sorts.
Lifehacker

“Latest of a number of failed attempts by Microsoft to turn the Windows desktop into more than just a place to store files.”
zdnet.com

“Another feature demonstrated was integration with social media and cloud services. We were shown how Microsoft’s cloud brings together contacts from different sources such as Facebook and Windows Live, and how Microsoft’s SkyDrive storage lets you share content.

The review version of Windows 8 with Metro was clean and responsive on the developer machines, and based on a quick look, Microsoft really has created a version of Windows that works properly with touch control.”
Guardian

Microsoft acknowledges there is room for improvement:

“There are things we’re still working on, that aren’t yet finished in the Developer Preview. For example, we know there are bugs in interacting at high speed with the scroll wheel on the mouse, and we’re working on fixing these. We’re also adding the ability to instantly zoom out with the mouse and keyboard, and we’re looking at ways to make scrolling faster and easier. And, we are working on fixing a bug in the Developer Preview that causes inconsistent and slow page-down/page-up behavior. We’re also looking at making rearranging more predictable for mouse, keyboard, and touch.”
Alice Steinglass quoted in CNET

Metro UI has all the elements of where the market is going:

• Customization / Personalization by users
• Dashboard feel
• Real-time updates
• Grid system / flexible UI across multiple devices
• Touch
• Intuitive navigation (for touch)

Metro UI also drives hope for Flash community’s future.

“We expect Windows desktop to be extremely popular for years to come (including Windows 8 desktop) and that it will support Flash just fine, including rich web based games and premium videos that require Flash. In addition, we expect Flash based apps will come to Metro via Adobe AIR, much the way they are on Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS today, including the recent number one paid app for the iPad on the Apple App Store, Machinarium, which is built using Flash tools and deployed on the Web using Flash Player and through app stores as a standalone app.”
Danny Winokur, Flash Platform Blog

Side note: I did some digging for sources of inspiration of the WinMo Metro UI. The Microsoft design team cited King County (Seattle) metro signage (pictured below) as a major source of inspiration.