[99semaj]

After only two months, MS has terminated the Kin. This heavily promoted product launch failed to achieve even five-digit sales volume. Although MS never really touted this effort as related to WM7, many industry watchers had likened this to a technology preview of Microsoft's upcoming rehash of its struggling mobile platform.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20009336-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

 

[North_of_Calgary]

What a company - what a waste of money. MS has thousands of products and essentially only two profitable products: Windows & Office. Even the business product lines (Exchange/SQL/Sharepoint) are so so. The rest of that company seems to be a collosal waste of money. It's just that the two profitable product lines provide such a huge revenue stream that they can keep blowing it like this.

Seemed like a crazy idea to release the Kin in the first place, unless there was integration with or an upgrade path to WP7. Was never worth the cost to develop/advertise/support.

 

[TKG26]

looked like a POS that is for a tween, and who would likely turn there nose up at.

 

[BGY11]

Agreed there. The fact it was essentially a dumbphone with smartphone data plans sure didn't help either.

 

[TorontoColin]

Although MS never really touted this effort as related to WM7, many industry watchers had likened this to a technology preview of Microsoft's upcoming rehash of its struggling mobile platform.

Windows Phone 7 is only related to Windows Mobile in that they are both mobile OS. Windows Phone is completely new and different, not a rehash in any way.

The Kin failed because less because of the poor hardware/software and more because of the ridiculous data plans attached to it, though there's no question the hardware/software weren't great.

 

[profets]

Can't really be surprised.. it was weird that they were launching it just few months after they showed off WP7. They even spoke about how kin was given the go ahead before WP7 was ready to be shown off and that they'd eventually move the Kin line right into WP7.

 

[grog]

This Engadget article has some insight into what happened with the Kin: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/what-killed-the-kin/

Basically it was supposed to come out a year and half ago and with a much cheaper data plan. It's still questionable if it would have succeeded at that time either but I could see it maybe having a chance if the data plan was especially cheap, something like $10/mth.

 

[TorontoColin]

Or maybe not so dead. Four months later and the Kin has been revived, perhaps for one more hopeless chance for glory.

Still only CDMA, so it's unlikely we'll see it up here. I doubt anyone is going to lose any sleep over that though.