BasiliskSt

July 01, 2010 at 7:01am

The Kin phones were both too late to market (missed the window of opportunity) and too expensive.

While Kin's were being offered at $49, the more capable and physically similar Palm Pixi was free. The energy was all behind Android phones and iPhone 4. Microsoft launched into an already crowded market with a less capable phone and offered nothing compelling.

I bought a Palm Pixi recently because the price was right (free) and I prefer a hard keyboard. I did so after HP's announced acquisition of Palm, confident of follow-on products and further development. I love the intuitive cards interface. I considered the Evo but it wasn't yet out and I needed a phone for travel and couldn't wait.

I'm not surprised at the Kin's failure. My daughter as a teenager was an avid Sidekick fan, but now as a young professional she's fully dedicated to iPhone and new teenagers want the latest and greatest technology or their parents want low cost. Kin didn't ignite love in the kids and didn't address the price issue for parents in a compelling way. Two years ago, the Kin would have been more impressive and it would have a couple of iterations of development with market feedback. Now it's just too late and too far behind the curve to earn time to develop.

nHeroGo

July 01, 2010 at 4:07am

Microsoft wants to compete with many other companies in many categories and ventures. They are very brave, but sometimes I wonder why they just don't stick to OS development and selling office-related software. They are good at it so why not just concentrate on that and make good OS-products every time instead of every second time?

They have a solid background in making business solutions and that is their bread and butter, but then they want to be all hip and personal and introduce the wow (as they would put it) and it just gets akward and it cracks me up. Google does something, and Redmond responds. Apple does something, and Redmond responds. It's like they are not doing it for the customers but because they wish to compete with specific companies.

Overall, it is good to be diversified in an ever-changing world of IT. So I understand why they try many things. And the idea of social networking is a very popular idea at the moment, but for crying out loud, did they study the cell-phone crowed and what makes them tick before they put this on the market?

TechJunkie

July 01, 2010 at 2:36am

This phone was aKIN for a disaster since the beginning.

 

I have to PooP!

Laserwulf

June 30, 2010 at 6:39pm

Had the ads mentioned things like no calendar nor IMing, I would have never looked twice. Considering how high the competition at Apple and Google have set the bar, not having basic features is commercial suicide. That's my favorite part of my Nexus One, how it synchs with Gmail, Google Calendar, Facebook, etc. This half-@$$ery is right up there with the Xbox 360 implementations of Facebook and Twitter.

Vegan

June 30, 2010 at 5:41pm

I've never even heard of this thing, and my coworkers talk about their phones and upcoming phones all day, so I guess that says something.