Kin, Microsoft's "iPhone killer", fails 6 weeks after launch.

[Mayareira]

http://ecommprojects.com/seo/Ahmed-Z...ll%20gates.jpg

Microsoft has discontinued the Kin phones line, just six weeks after it launched the devices. The company blamed low sales numbers, and was reluctant to say how many it sold exactly. But the Kin's failure comes as no surprise, with a troubled Microsoft playing catch-up in the mobile world.

The Kin phones were too pricey from the beginning. They weren't exactly smartphones, but they were priced like one. The Kin One cost $130, and the Kin Two cost $150 with a two-year Verizon contract (before a mail-in rebate). Verizon dramatically slashed Kin prices earlier this week by $100, with the Kin Two at a mere $50 and Kin One at $30.

But Verizon's price cuts were not enough. Microsoft targeted the Kin at teenagers, as an always-connected device for their social lives on Twitter and Facebook. This Internet connectivity however, came at a cost: Verizon's data and voice charges for the Kin ranged up to $70 per month, an amount most teenagers working at fast-food counters would struggle to meet for their phone alone.

Microsoft and Verizon didn't want to give any indication as to how many Kins they sold in the first six weeks of availability, leaving plenty of room for speculation. A rumor from Business Insider said that Microsoft sold only 500 Kins, while a CNet source was much more generous, placing the figure "south of 10,000." Nevertheless, such reports point to a low number.

Although cool for a teenager, the Kin phones arrived perhaps a year too late. An interesting revelation in this area came from Engadget's Joshua Topolsky, who claims that the device should have made it to the market 18 months ago--but the Kins were delayed, as Microsoft allegedly wanted the operating system on the phones to be based on Windows, instead of the Sidekick platform, which Microsoft acquired with Danger in 2008.

Plus, the Kin OS had no apps or maps, and paired with a price tag too steep for its target audience, the Microsoft Kin was pretty much dead on arrival. Why would a teenager want Microsoft's expensive hipster phone, when they could get, for $99, an iPhone 3GS with iOS 4 and join the iParty? Alternatively, Palm's Pre and Pixi Plus phones carry pricing similar to the original pricing for the Kins, but have more software features--making them a better deal than a Kin.

Microsoft said it would continue to sell the Kin through Verizon (it probably has plenty of the initial stock left over), but the company said that it is now focusing exclusively on the Windows Phone 7 operating system, arriving later this year. Let's hope Microsoft has better luck with that product.

http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/...soft-kin-2.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2010...destinedtofail

[Seanr]

Here is a more in depth read of what happened. But basically, internal interests clashed and Microsoft had a contractual obligation to Verizon for 2 phones.
Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story

Spoiler: show

Since our piece on Wednesday, we've had more trusted sources step forward to fill in some blanks and clarify the story behind the amazingly swift fall from grace that Microsoft's Kin phones have experienced since their launch just a few weeks ago. It's a fascinating tale, and we wanted to share everything we've learned.

Project Pink -- the initiative that would ultimately become Kin -- began life under the direction of free-spirited exec J Allard even before Microsoft had acquired Danger in early 2008, though the company knew full well that it would ultimately need Danger's cloud computing expertise to execute on the vision. As it turns out, Danger's intellectual property was more important to Microsoft than its manpower, which might go a long way toward explaining stories we've heard in the past of Danger's Palo Alto headquarters looking like a ghost town not long after the purchase. Initially, both ODMs and carriers were tripping over each other for the opportunity to be involved and launch the product; ultimately, Sharp and Verizon were selected as the headline partners. Knowing Allard and his track record, the vision was probably grandiose and easy to fall in love with -- and needless to say, no one had been quoting a mid-2010 launch back then.

So with Danger filling in the last piece of the puzzle, Allard and his team got underway, completely separate from the Windows Phone (née Windows Mobile) team led by senior vice president Andy Lees. Bear in mind this was before the so-called "reboot" that led to the Windows Phone 7 that we know today; at that point, Microsoft was still cranking on an older vision that would ultimately be scrapped. Whether the initial plan in Pink's earliest days was to use Danger's legacy Java-based platform is unclear, but apparently, that plan ultimately evolved: Allard's intention had still been to avoid Windows Mobile's underpinnings, but he'd wanted to pull together bits and pieces from across the company -- presumably mostly from Zune, which was his baby -- to create a new Kin platform that suited the product's needs, not to share a platform with anything in Lees' department.

To get anywhere, a project inside Microsoft needs an executive sponsor, and for Pink, Allard had been that guy from day one. It was his baby. Of course, Allard was a visionary, an idea man; Lees -- like most Microsoft execs -- is a no-nonsense numbers guy, and to put it bluntly, he didn't like that Pink existed. To quote our sources, Lees was "jealous," and he was likely concerned that Kin was pulling mindshare (and presumably resources) from Windows Mobile's roadmap. With enough pressure, Lees ended up getting his way; Pink fell under his charge and Allard was forced into the background.

Having Lees in control changed everything, if for no other reason than he didn't care about the project at all.
Having Lees in control changed everything, if for no other reason than he didn't care about the project at all. This was right around the time that Windows Phone 7 was rebooting, and Pink didn't fit in his game plan; to him, it was little more than a contractual obligation to Verizon, a delivery deadline that needed to be met. Pink -- Allard's vision of it, anyhow -- was re-scoped, retooled, and forced onto a more standardized core that better fit in with the Windows Phone roadmap, which in turn pushed back the release date. Ironically, because they had to branch off so early, Kin would ultimately end up with an operating system that shares very little with the release version of Windows Phone 7 anyway.

At some point prior to launch, the Kin team knew it was screwed. We've confirmed that Verizon did, in fact, pull the rug out from under them -- the planned data pricing had changed and become much more expensive, which was supposed to be one of Kin's top selling points. Voices on the team about huge, critical missing features like an app store fell on deaf ears, ostensibly because Lees just wanted to get the product out the door to meet the contract and wash his hands of it. The departures of Allard and Bach -- which our sources would not blame on Kin, at least not alone -- were just what Lees needed to finish Kin off, and that's exactly what he did earlier this week. We're told that Kin has sold fewer than 10,000 units in total, and the future of its support -- planned software updates and the like -- rests largely in Verizon's hands, since it's the one and only carrier that will ever have offered it.



While it's hard to argue that Kin is an awful product, the saddest part of the story is that many of the people responsible for it knew it was -- they were largely victims of political circumstance, forced to release a phone that was practically raw in the middle. Though Microsoft's official stance is that the group is being integrated with the Windows Phone 7 team, it's a major culture clash -- the two groups operated completely independently from one another -- and unofficially, Lees' intention is to keep them out of the first release. In other words, many, if not most Kin staffers are literally twiddling their thumbs at their desks, and it's unclear who will get to keep their jobs in the long term. No decisions have yet been made about what elements of Kin will find their way into future Windows Phone releases; though Kin One and Kin Two were fatally flawed, there's no arguing that they'd brought some really great concepts to the table (notably the Kin Studio) that it'd be tragic to see fall through the cracks of a Microsoft conference room.

[Headspace]

This thread is funny for two reasons.

No one gave a shit about that phone

The person who posted this.

[Seanr]

I don't give a shit about it either.. just adding to the story cuz yahoo is lol

[Eratosthenes]

That phone was fucking ugly. I'm happy I won't be seeing commercials for it any more.

[Tempyst]

That phone was fucking ugly. I'm happy I won't be seeing commercials for it any more.

I saw the commercials and just felt confused. They should have just slapped a phone and 3G function on a Zune HD.

[Kaisha]

It's not an iPhone, of course the kids don't fucking want it.

[Auspice]

I saw the commercials and just felt confused. They should have just slapped a phone and 3G function on a Zune HD.

THIS FUCKING THIS

[Demosthenes]

It was never supposed to be an iphone killer. Just a cheap social phone.

[dejet]

>.> I dont look at the kin as anything, tho MS should focus more on shit like the htc hd2. Screen is sweet lol.

Id buy a htc hd2 before a kin any day. Hell id buy a iphone before a kin. Thing just looked lame from the start.

[jmc]

>.> I dont look at the kin as anything, tho MS should focus more on shit like the htc hd2. Screen is sweet lol.

Id buy a htc hd2 before a kin any day. Hell id buy a iphone before a kin. Thing just looked lame from the start.

Sadly HTC HD2 is only nice with android on it right now.


However, if microsoft finally decided to let it have windows 7 mobile (when its released) then it would be a awesome phone overall.

[Seanr]

like I said earlier... Kin was dead before it was even released. They had a contractual obligation to Verizon and had to release the shit 1 and shit 2.

[dejet]

Sadly HTC HD2 is only nice with android on it right now.


However, if microsoft finally decided to let it have windows 7 mobile (when its released) then it would be a awesome phone overall.

Iv only had a short look at it. I hope to play around with it when the guy shows up in my office again.

MS really has a long ways to go with phones. Stuff like the HD2 are the way they can catch up... what OS is it running anyways?

[Seanr]

windows mobile 6.5 and it will not be officially updated to Windows Phones 7 Series because it does not have the required hardware buttons

[fishstix]

I rolled my eyes when the kin was name dropped in Pretty Little Liars, "let's post on her facebook with the kin!"

[Minions]

Whoever thought this was an iphone killer should be shot.

[Krandor]

Whoever thought this was an iphone killer should be shot.

That would basically mean everyone who feels the need to constantly elevate Apple by declaring every product that fails in the market a <random Apple Product> killer.

So basically, every Apple fanboy, including but not limited to the OP.

[Tempyst]

That would basically mean everyone who feels the need to constantly elevate Apple by declaring every product that fails in the market a <random Apple Product> killer.

So basically, every Apple fanboy, including but not limited to the OP.

Yeah pretty much no one thought or even mentioned this could be an iphone killer, wasn't it marketed more towards the tween market? Meh, insecure apple fans, what else is new

[Tempyst]

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/1...uttondigit.jpg

NEC's new iPhone killer, dubbed "The Telephone", is due for release in late 2010, but will it stand up to the hype? Only time will tell

[Mayareira]

Man...lol, is it Apple's fault now that everybody dubs their phones as "iphone killer"? I don't even think Apple fanboys knew the existance of this thing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...t-2016199.html

Just google "iphone killer kin", you don't get any results on a single Apple related source as in Macrumors, etc.