Whatever you may think of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system -- and lots of people are pretty high on it -- there's no getting around the fact that Redmond is having a hell of time getting many people interested.
Sales of devices running the previous well-reviewed version, Windows Phone 7, have shown some signs of life recently, but still remain woefully small at about 3.2 percent market share, as of the middle of 2012. That's up from 1.2 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Canalys. Microsoft hopes to accelerate that trend with Windows Phone 8, its latest version unveiled at an event on Monday.
It's still very early in the game, and new phones from Nokia and HTC could breathe fire into Microsoft's mobile efforts yet. Meanwhile, here's an early, if highly unscientific and unconventional, indicator of market sentiment.
About 11,000 people read our Microsoft liveblog coverage Monday morning in just over an hour. By contrast, our liveblog coverage of Apple's iPhone 5 launch in September brought in nearly 360,000 visits in a hour, and an Apple gathering last week to announce the new iPad mini and other products (an event that Apple also livestreamed) drew just over 75,000 readers.
That is all.
