“Why don’t we take a survey of our customers and find out which device has the biggest market share?”

English Lesson: Why don’t we take a survey of our customers and find out which device has the biggest market share?

You work at a company that makes applications for tablet computers. You and some coworkers are debating about which tablet device is most important to build for. There's disagreement, so you suggest a way to solve the debate.

Why don’t we take a survey of our customers and find out which device has the biggest market share?

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Why don't we (do something)

This is a way to make a suggestion to do something together. You use this when you expect the listener to agree with you:

I don't feel like cooking tonight. Why don't we order something out?

Why don't we make a deal: if I help you with this, you have to promise to come to my game on Sunday.

(electronic) devices

"Electronic devices" are machines that use batteries such as laptop computers, phones, tablets, portable video games, and so on.

You can also use the word "device" by itself to talk about any machine:

I saw this device on TV that chops tomatoes perfectly in just a few seconds.

But more and more, "device" by itself specifically means a mobile phone or tablet computer:

I heard that they're releasing a new device at the end of this month.

take a survey of (a group of people)

A "survey" is a set of questions that you ask to get some general information about a group of people. Companies often use surveys to find out whether their customers are satisfied. For example, after renting a car the car rental company might email you a survey to ask you questions like "How satisfied were you with our customer service?"

The phrase "take a survey" describes someone answering the questions on a survey:

After the convention, they send you an email asking you to take a survey.

You might also use the phrase "take a survey of ___" to talk about the company or organization who's giving a survey to people.

We took a survey of home shoppers in the Atlanta area to determine what features and amenities were most important to them.

market share

"Market share" means the percentage that a company or product sells compared to all of its competitors. For example, if an athletic shoe company has 30% market share, it means that 30% of the money spent on athletic shoes goes to that company.

When people describe "market share", they use size words like "large", "small", "bigger"etc.

They have a larger market share than all of their competitors combined.

When you want to describe how a company's market share is changing, use "grow", "shrink", "increase", or "decrease":

Our market share has been shrinking for the last few years.