Heh... well, I guess your feeling comes down to what your opinion of "not what the majority of the customer base wants" means.Well that's true.
The 5e skill list and system fill the purpose almost exactly what the 5e designers designed to. The purpose however is not what the majority of the customer base wants.
You are correct that a single system will not be 100% what most players want. But that is true of every single rule in the game-- every single rule will be exactly what a few players might want... but every other player would have wished for the rule to be tweaked ever so much-- a different word choice here... a little added rule bit bit there... a restriction there. No rule can or will satisfy 100% of what a player wants 100% of the time.
So the point that the skill system is not what most players want is essentially meaningless. Most players don't want the current skill system? Yeah, well...
- Most players also don't want the way currently that hit points work. They'd have the rules for that changed in a heartbeat-- with every single player wanting a completing different change from every other player.
- Most players want how races/species are defined and designed different from what we currently have, but no one could all agree what those changes should be.
- Most players think the feat system should eliminate some feats, add others, adjust the balance on even more, or completely remove the system altogether.
So on and so forth down the line.
But WotC is not here to make a set of game rules that is going to work for ALL players equally well, because that is statistically impossible. It cannot be done. The best they can do is build a foundational set of rules that work okay for most players, even if they are not preferred. And that's what every single skill system D&D has had since they started including them...
They're all... fine.
That's it. They're fine. They're not great because none of us would agree on what makes a skill system great. Instead, the system they use defines what it does, they define how it works, they make it relatively easy to use, and they represent a complete set of rules that most importantly can be changed and adjusted by each individual Dungeon Master to make it more in the manner that each DM would prefer it to be. To make it great for them.
And that's the same for every other rule in the game.
Whatever it is YOU think the skill system should be... is GREAT! For YOU! You can have the system as easy or as complex as you want. Whatever works for your table, you can have it! And that's what's great about it. The only downside being that YOU have to build it yourself-- using the foundational system that WotC gave you or completely ripping it out and installing whatever new system you have in mind. But Wizards is not about to give you the system YOU want just because you think it's the best system. Because what YOU want is just as much "not what the majority of the customer base wants" as the system currently in place. And it's foolish to think otherwise.