The Nokia Lumia 920 certainly seems to be selling quite well globally, making it one of the most successful handsets sold by Nokia in recent years. That being said, the company seems to be struggling to keep up with the heavy demand for the device, especially in the United States. So what gives?

According to mobile industry analyst Tero Kuittinen, Nokia likely anticipated higher demand in Europe, where the brand is more popular. He further suggests that, due to an expected lower consumer demand, less Nokia Lumia 920 handsets were targeted for the North American launch.

Basically Tero Kuittinen says that reports of phones being sold out in the United States are actually because of restricted supply in the first place, and not necessarily a sign of huge demand. Is he right about Nokia having limited stock in the U.S.? Very possibly, but honestly that doesn’t mean demand for the phone isn’t out there.

Windows Phone 8 and the Lumia 920 seem to have people talking in a way we have never seen with a Windows-based mobile device before. Sure, past Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices generated some hype as well, but it doesn’t seem to equal up to the same magnitude we are seeing with Nokia’s latest flagship phone. People are curious about the phone and are looking up articles about it, trying to learn more.

The big question is whether the hype for the Lumia 920 will result in long-term success. At the moment, it’s probably to hard to say for sure.

The Nokia Lumia 920 is a solid piece of hardware (despite a few small flaws), but the competition from the iPhone and Android handsets is strong. Next year RIM will attempt a comeback with BB10 and Firefox will roll out its own mobile OS, adding even more competition to the market.

Do you think that Windows Phone 8 and Nokia Lumia 920 will win consumers away from these future offerings, or is the Lumia 920′s current success only temporary?

The square is the current darling of the design community, with Microsoft as its biggest supporter. But once you start to look for them, you realize many others are embracing the square too. It's not too hard to figure out, you see them everyday.

If you’ve bought a computer lately, browsed the Web, or downloaded an app, you may have noticed a hot new trend sweeping the world of design. Everything from Pinterest to Windows 8 has it. The grid is in, baby. You can’t play fair unless you’re made of squares. Now, you may think we’re crazy (but we don’t even care), but we know exactly what’s going on. You don’t have to be a Huey Lewis & The News fan to realize, everyone thinks it’s hip to be square.

Yes, the square is the current darling of the design world and the grid is its home. It’s already becoming almost cliche to incorporate them in a redesign or new product. Once you start to look for it, the square is taking over. They. Are. Everywhere. Five years from now, we’re going to hate them.

It hasn’t always been hip

If we look back at web design trends, boxes have, of course, always been around because they’re great for buttons. Except up until a few years ago, the majority of these boxes had rounded corners.

Using rounded corners and shiny gradients was one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0. This article by FontFeed in 2006 calls the use of rounded fonts “a clear trend.” It didn’t stop at text either, just take a look at this site, RecyclingAppeal, to see that not only does it have those other Web 2.0 basics – the centralized layout and large header – every button, tab and box has rounded corners.

While this style of Web 2.0 design hasn’t stood the test of time, other examples are far more resilient, the most perfect example of which being Apple’s iOS. Introduced in 2007, every button on the homescreen has a smoothed out corner – no sharp edges for Apple. This wasn’t any Web 2.0 nonsense either, as boxes with rounded corners had been part of Apple’s design language for years. The entire OS is full of textures and gradients as well.

The story goes that in early 1981, Mac developer extraordinaire Bill Atkinson was showing Steve Jobs the way QuickDraw rendered ovals and circles. Jobs wanted to know how good it was at drawing rectangles with rounded corners, which he said were everywhere around him, from the whiteboard to a no-parking sign. Atkinson wasn’t sure if he could do it, but tried anyway and the day after he showed Jobs the “RoundRects” he so desired.

Microsoft the trendsetter?

In early 2010, Microsoft revealed Windows Phone 7, which used a new and, at the time, rather unusual ‘Metro’ interface, which used a grid of squares and rectangles for a homepage instead of traditional icon shortcuts. Microsoft has since fully embraced the square. In Windows 8, squares and rectangles are absolutely everywhere. The new Windows 8 logo is a collection of squares on a grid, sometimes shown with perspective, and its Modern UI interface (the new name for ‘Metro’) is mostly squares, which Microsoft likes to call Live Tiles. 

Head over to Windows Phone 8 and it’s the same story: more squares. It’s safe to say Microsoft is a fan of shapes with equal length sides, and it’s not shy about using them.

Windows 8 is expected to influence Web design next year too, with several design sites listing tile-based interfaces and bold, bright colors as a potential trends for 2013. Another potential trend for the coming year is brand over design, where branding will influence the way corporate websites appear, and as more companies are choosing the square in their logos, so the more they’ll appear online and in advertising.

The Pinterest-ification of the Web

But is Microsoft the only one with a square fetish? Let’s ask another tech site. How about The Verge? It knows a thing or two about corners. The tech site shares Microsoft’s preference for four-sided polygons. It’s homepage design is reminiscent of Windows 8.

Then there’s Pinterest, which may be as influential as Windows 8 when it comes to Web design. Pinterest is loaded with squares, and after scrolling down half a page, the screen is filled with the things. There’s even – irony of ironies – a “squares on websites” Pinterest board dedicated to sharing images of websites filled with right angles. Pinterest’s design has spawned innumerable copy cats. Everyone wants a site full of uneven squares on a grid, and lots of pictures.

Justin Timberlake may have a thing for squares too, or if not, someone in the design team over at MySpace certainly does, as the site’s recently unveiled new look is again, all about squares and the cursed rectangle. MySpace desperately wants to be hip again. This new design is a path toward that redemption.

It goes on: Photo-sharing app Instagram has based its new web profiles around the square, designer showcase Dribbble is filled with the things, as is Kickstarter. In 2010, the BBC revealed a complete redesign of its websites, and squares were the order of the day, right down to each letter in its logo getting its own individual box to live in. It did however, incorporate a fair few RoundRects, too. A rumored Yahoo homepage redesign is also full of, you guessed it, grids and squares. Recent redesigns of Hulu and Netflix show similar trends.

Finally, there’s the ultimate square worshiper of all: Square. A company that uses the square in its name and logo, and shapes its product like one.

Do squares slow our brains?

Despite their current proliferation, they may not be as effective as shapes with rounded corners. An article published at DesignModo quotes Professor Jurg Nanni, a Swiss mathematician, who says “A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size.” So, sharp edges slow down out brain function, while rounded shapes speed it up.

A writer at WebDesignDepot agrees, saying circles are especially helpful in mobile Web design, as users want faster, easy-on-the-eye navigation systems, and we’re more inclined to tap rounded buttons because of their similarity to the tips of our fingers.

Our design fetish with squares may be hiding a darker side, and with that in mind, it seems fitting that since we started off the article butchering Huey Lewis and the News’ famous lyrics, we should close by doing the same with Patrick Bateman’s thoughts on the band.

The square, then, is becoming the building block of modern design, symbolizing the pleasures of conformity and showing how companies recognize the importance of trends. The square has ended up representing a personal statement about the company itself, though of what I’m not quite sure.

This week in Jetsetter, India gets a brand new edition of Solid Snake's adventures, one new publisher aims to infiltrate the Turkish MMO market with the untested City of Steam and The Lost Titans, and Nintendo takes the Wii U to Europe.

Happy December to one and all, from Jetsetter! Jetsetter, Digital Trends’ weekly column devoted to gaming outside the United States! Jetsetter, that lover of German-made Dreamcast games produced a decade after the system’s death! Jetsetter, the column that refuses to say goodbye to the Neo Geo! It’s cold and dark outside where Jetsetter is being written, but we’re jamming about games made in hemispheres where it’s sunny until 9 o’clock on December 1^st!

That’s how we roll. This week we take a look at MMOs hitting Turkey and Arabic speaking countries, the Wii U’s European launch, a new edition of a particularly famous stealth game only coming out abroad.

* Nintendo brings Wii U to Europe.

The Wii U stormed the beaches of Normandy, other European beaches, and a few landlocked countries as well on Friday, continuing the global role out of Nintendo’s new console that started here in the US on Nov. 18. How’s the tablet controller-toting console doing? As of this writing, the European launch is going smoothly even with limited supplies, but some retailers are skeptical that sales will stay steady once there’s a good supply. “Although we’ve sold everything we’ve received we haven’t seen the ‘must have’ demand from owners of other consoles,” said Don McCabe, head honcho of UK video game retailer Chips, “PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 customers are looking over but hanging fire on whether to buy.” Hanging fire, by the way, is slang for hesitation. That’s a pro tip for you.

* India gets Metal Gear Solid 4: 25^th Anniversary Edition in December.

Fans of stealth and bushy mustaches across India are getting a special treat this Christmas in the form of a brand new version of Metal Gear Solid 4. Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots—25^th Anniversary Edition comes out in December, just in time for the title to still be semi-accurate. It will be distributed by Konami’s partner in India, Origin Games. The new edition is actually light on extras. In fact, the only real bonus is Trophy support and the option to install the game a single time to your PlayStation 3, rather than in chunks between acts as in the original release. Those options were made available in the US and Japan with a patch last summer. So what you’re really missing out on is a sweet new box. Yeah. I want one too.

* DAO Games brings City of Steam and The Lost Titan to Turkey.

Mechanist Games’ steampunk MMO City of Steam and ZQGame’s The Lost Titan are receiving a translation into Arabic thanks to DAO Games. The free-to-play City of Steam spent most of 2012 in beta testing and still hasn’t officially opened in the west. The Lost Titan on the other hand only just opened its beta test on Thursday. City of Steam actually looks kind of cool, but Titan is such a brazen World of Warcraft rip off (just look at that logo!) that it’s probably already banned in Iran. “It’s our intention to bring the very best MMOs to the MENA and Turkish market and to build DAO games as the premium partner for global publishers and studios looking to access these rapidly expanding online gaming markets,” DAO CEO Peter Kwisthout told GamesIndustry International.

So much can happen in just a few short days. Microsoft took a ride on the Windows 8 roller coaster, but it's Apple that needs the tracks for direction and Blackberry that wants the thrill and sense of urgency. Plus, consumers rate their mobile carriers.

You know what the best part of mobile technology is? You can access your emails, apps, and websites pretty much anywhere. That is what makes it possible for you to read this, your favorite column on your favorite website, right from your hospital bed as you recover from being repeatedly trampled over during Black Friday. While you bask in your deal finding and slight buzz off of pain meds, mobile companies are trying to hold things together – and some are doing better than others. All that and more in this weekend wrap of mobile stories for November 25-30, 2012.

Windows 8′s ups and downs

Calling the existence of Windows 8 a roller coaster ride would be rather cliche. Perhaps specificity would improve the analogy. Windows 8 has been like a roller coaster and everyone on the ride hates roller coasters. Let’s take a little walk through the ride. Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Windows Phone sales have quadrupled over the course of 2012 (going up). To make that climb go smoothly, the Windows 8 store has more than 20,000 apps available. Microsoft is still trying to figure out how to make those apps profitable, but that’s just a slight bump in the track. Nothing to worry about. Even the other little nerve-wracking clicks on the journey to the top are being taken care of, as a bug fix will be available for Windows Phone 8 in December. Heck, Microsoft is even bolstering its old OS with a Windows 7.8 update in early 2013, which is the equivalent to the carnival games for people that decide not to get on the big rides. This is where everyone that usually hates roller coasters is thinking, “Well this isn’t that bad. Maybe I’ll actually enjoy it.” Then comes the drop.

We all know the internal memory debacle that killed some of the Surface RT’s momentum, but the full effects of disappointment across the board started to sink in. Microsoft has halved its Surface RT order thanks to lower than expected sales. While the Surface Pro appears like it’ll be a sizable upswing when you approach it, turns out it may just be an even bigger drop. Reports show the Surface Pro will have half the battery life of the RT tablet offerings and a consumer startling $900 starting price upon release. When can we get off this ride again? On the plus side, Microsoft is offering a new feedback program for Surface owners so maybe it will address all the troubling information laid out above. To maintain the roller coaster comparison, this is like when they take your picture at the end of the ride and then try to charge you for it like it’s some sort of memory you actually want to keep. It’s not. Let’s move on.

Blackberry might want stop hyping, start working faster

There’s no denying that Blackberry 10 appears to be rejuvenating everything and everyone with interest in Research in Motion. It’s the most promising product the company has come up with in years and every time a new piece of information leaks, excitement seems to flair up. The biggest problem is it’s not here yet. As consumers wait for the release of this savior of an OS from RIM, they are biding their time by buying other products. Android and iOS moved ahead of Blackberry as the top enterprise devices for the first time in ever. The iPhone is being bought by so many business people that Apple is starting to offer an iPhone 5 and tie bundle. The sooner the Blackberry 10 launch happens, the better. Even developers are getting anxious as the development phone, the Dev Alpha C, is in limited supply and Research in Motion appears to making random, nervous changes before the launch. Keep it together, RIM.

Apple is losing control

The entire future of Blackberry may be in the balance, but Apple seems to have reached new heights and gotten completely lost. It could have to do with its Maps app, which was bad enough to lead to the firing of its manager. The new and sure to be in demand iPad Mini and iMac will be facing shortages during this holiday season, meaning tons of missed sale opportunities. This will come to a huge disappointment in China, as the country is just about to get access to the hottest Apple devices this December. Granted, China’s Foxconn workers built the devices so once you’ve seen the inside of them already. Apple’s not totally directionless, of course. It’s landed the iPhone 5 on T-Mobile - supposedly – and made unlocked iPhone 5‘s available for purchase on its online store. Apple also topped Microsoft in tablet sales this Black Friday, but Android’s tablet bombardment is making the top spot a hard one to hold on to. Apple has fallen into the hare role, napping on the side of the road once it established a sizable lead, but there are tons of tortoises that would love to play spoiler.

Mobile carriers

We spend a lot of time talking about phones and their features, discussing the specs and the hypothetical performance of each device as its peak operating status. Everything changes once you factor in carriers though. For example, AT&T subscribers using the iPhone 5 have the ability to browse the web while talking on the phone. The trade off, though, is they have to put up with AT&T. That’s something not a ton of people are pleased about doing, as AT&T managed to place last in a nation-wide survey by Consumer Reports. Verizon topped the heap in quality despite AT&T’s sizable 4G network that trumps all others. Sprint held its own in a few cities, and appears to hope to make that true in a few more as it expands its 4G LTE coverage. Even if Sprint isn’t successful, it can revel in the fact that it isn’t AT&T.

What’s it like to run the latest version of Windows on your computer, phone and tablet? Amazing convenience punctuated by frustration.

I’m writing this on a Windows 8 desktop I built two weeks ago, I travel with a Microsoft Surface tablet, and carry a Nokia 920 Microsoft phone. In short, I’m living in a wall-to-wall Microsoft world. I’ve discovered some pretty cool aspects of operating this way, and some minor disappointments. To get the real benefit, I’m slowly changing the way I work to use SkyDrive more, and use Skype better. I’m also getting a little annoyed that Surface doesn’t support Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and won’t take a second browser.

Let me walk you through what I love and hate about living totally within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Adding a new device is a cakewalk

When you buy a new current-gen device, you simply sign in with your Microsoft ID (the one you use for MSN or Hotmail) and most of your stuff is automatically configured. Legacy software doesn’t come across, but if you bought an app through the app store, you can either automatically get the apps you purchased (generally at no additional charge) or you’ll be offered an upgrade to the current version for a typically small price. If you’ve ever done a prior migration in Windows, it was typically a several-day initial process, then about a month of getting things back to where you wanted them. Now most of the personality stuff migrates automatically. While I think Chrome still retains more settings on the browser side, Internet Explorer is much improved, too.

Living on the phone camera

Windows Phone can be put into camera mode and upload the pictures to the cloud – SkyDrive in this case – faster than any competing product. In addition, the Nokia 920’s camera is, in my opinion, the best in the market in terms of picture quality. This combination makes the phone much more useful than any portable camera or phone I’ve had before, even earlier Windows phones. People really can’t tell my pictures come from a camera phone. I’ll admit it could have a better flash (the Samsung S3 has a flash that could likely kill vampires), but the camera itself is excellent.

The Lumia 920 also feels far quicker getting to stuff than on other phones. This is hugely important if I’m driving and need to check on an address, or put the phone into GPS mode to find a Starbucks. It likely has saved my life a couple times – had I tried this on most phones, I’d likely be parked in someone’s trunk.

The Surface tablet is amazing

I just love this tablet. The combination of extremely low weight and extremely long battery life has been a godsend. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to love an ARM-based PC product, but the Surface has turned me around. It boots up and shuts down quickly, I don’t even notice it in my backpack, and connected to SkyDrive, it has all the capacity I need. I’m still learning to remember to put my movies on an SD card to take them with me, but this process is still typically far faster than copying them over the network to a laptop anyway.

Some things still need fixing

First, why doesn’t SkyDrive come preinstalled? It’s a core feature on every platform, so why do I have to download and install it, then tell the app who I am? Windows and SkyDrive share a user name and password, so why won’t it log me in automatically?

Second, neither the Surface tablet nor Windows Phone support VPNs. This can be problematic for travelers, who sometimes need VPNs to connect to services that aren’t designed to work overseas, like Skype, Amazon and Netflix. I understand that there are better security products Microsoft prefers, but not having a VPN creates a usability issue.

Third, why not move all of the passwords and IDs you have stored on IE to all of your browsers? Chrome does this, so if IE won’t, I should at least be allowed to load Chrome on my tablet, but I can’t. IE doesn’t work well on all sites anymore, so having a second browser has become a survival mechanism.

Finally, Office should have been a Modern UI app. While the mail client on the Surface works fine, it also works differently than Outlook, creating confusion. Furthermore, transferring settings between Office versions, or having to set up each version of Office manually shouldn’t be necessary anymore. It feels like Office was mostly left in last decade with the new 2013 version.

Nice work, Microsoft

While Microsoft’s latest suite of products come with some annoyances, they work together much better than they used to, when all the interfaces were different and Microsoft products only worked better together in some marketing guy’s head. The improvements are pronounced, and both the phone and tablet have comes miles from where they were. With a few – OK more than a few – improvements, this platform could be so much better than anything else out there. Here’s hoping the fixes come soon.

Guest contributor Rob Enderle is the founder and principal analyst for the Enderle Group, and one of the most frequently quoted tech pundits in the world. Opinion pieces denote the opinions of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Digital Trends.