Like my marketing professor used to say:

> If everyone in the market is advertising toothpaste with sweet minty
> taste. You better advertise a toothpaste with salty taste. If everyone
> is advertising with flouride, you better do one without flouride!

i.e. Think Different!

Basically it's a marketing trend. All about *standing out* from the others. Now that market is saturated with glossy finish products, matte is back in.

There are and always will be merits & demerits for each, and they will each be suitable for different tasks. ***There is no particular reason, the masses don't think too much, they just follow the leaders.*** :)

A better question would be pros/cons of glossy vs. matte look. A simple answer would look like below:

**Glossy**

*Pros:*

 - Attracts the eye (bright, shiny)
 - Illusion of depth

*Cons:*

 - Overused?
 - more complex to produce (more resources, be it time, money, cpu cycles ...etc.)

**Matte**

*Pros:*

 - Not Distracting (can easily glance over it)
 - simpler to produce (less resources, be it time, money, cpu cycles ...etc.)

*Cons:*

 - Overused?
 - Not attracting attention?

As you can see this is an overly simplified list. A quick google search didn't find any links showing such results. A good chance for the UX community to get together and make one! Time to wiki it!

See the [Google trends for matte vs glossy][1].


  [1]: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=matte,%20glossy