I am a co-author of a premium wp theme that is one of the best selling themes at Themeforest. I came to wordpress having used many other systems - remember Modx when it won best this, that and the other thing 3 yrs ago? Before that Drupal, Joomla, and the list goes on.

Our WP theme was reasonably straightforward when it was first introduced in 2010. But, as the very first comment to your article by Milan noted, as soon as you give the user something, they want something more. Thank goodness our coding skills have been able to keep up with the feature requests.

What we believe to be key is the way in which accomplishing tasks in wordpress is organized/presented/enabled for the site builder. Beyond the basic wordpress theme, for a novice builder the wordpress way of doing things via hooks, editing files, etc, is tremendously challenging for the average individual (or so tens of thousands have told me). To me, it seemed in part this was and is deliberate, given the incestuous relationship between wordpress.org and wordpress.com. This methodology and its unfriendliness gave rise to premium themes, which seek to bridge this gap. And they have. Some well, some poorly.

User do not want simplicity in ability, rather, they want simplicity of use for the creation process. But they want complex results. So they want the best of both worlds. And the very proof of this is the default wp theme and how quickly it is abandoned by 99% of the wp users. It is simple, and because its output is simple unless one starts to master all sorts of complex "things" like the aforementioned hooks and editing core files, it does not satisfy needs.

Having over 30 yrs of coding in my background, my estimation is that while there might be a niche for every product and a few adopters, in fact it is going to take a major evolutionary breakthrough in technology that really grabs the attention of the marketplace (I keep on thinking of Mr Scott trying to talk to the computer to create Transparent Aluminum) in order for the current market leader wordpress to be pushed aside. New market momentum requires something exciting to grab the public's eye. Simply seeking to redefine "simple" by dumbing down abilities does not on its own cut it. And so for Simplicity, which truly in concept reminds me of about 300 others I have seen over the years, I predict the same outcome.......

My thoughts at 245am. Perhaps bad timing, but I think relatively on track.