It's been less than two months since Microsoft revealed its Kin line of smartphones to the world but the company is already pulling the plug on the messaging phones.
When Kin One and Kin Two launched, everyone was a little bit puzzled. Why would Microsoft announce Windows Phone 7 but run a different OS on the first two own-brand phones it's ever produced? And these were cheap phones aimed at social networking and messaging; no one ever expected Microsoft to first target a niche market before releasing a phone for everyone.
It looks like Microsoft agrees with us. Just 48 days after the devices went on sale, Redmond has announced it is dropping the Kin line. It won't be debuting in Europe this autumn and the team working on it will join the Windows Phone 7 team, where Microsoft will be focusing its efforts going forward.
"We have made the decision to focus on our Windows Phone 7 launch and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones."
The Kin One was a small, round device with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard; a 2.6-inch (320x240) QVGA touch screen; a Tegra APX2600 CPU; 256MB of DDR RAM; an accelerometer; GPS chips; 802.11b/g, EvDO Rev. A; Bluetooth 2.1; a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and 4GB of storage.
The Kin Two boasted 8GB of storage; an 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash the ability to shoot HD video; a 3.4-inch (480x320) HVGA touch screen; a Tegra APX2600 CPU; 256MB of DDR RAM; an accelerometer; GPS chips; 802.11b/g, EvDO Rev. A and Bluetooth 2.1.
They both shared the same foundation as Windows Phone 7 but don't run the shiny, new OS.
Rest in peace, Kin. We hardly knew ye.
This show how good steve is as a CEO of M$.
PLEASE COME BACK!...
"Yaa... the dirty little secret we're not being told is that Microsoft has basically dumped development support for their Zune HD "beta testers", sacrificing a good portion of their loyal fan base in order to accelerate the development of their Windows Phone 7 OS and hardware platform. Much of the UI is merely an evolution of the one found in the Zune HD, but the apps and games created and ported to this new WP7 platform using XNA 4.0 will not be compatible with the Zune HD. And yes, that includes the recently announced Xbox Live Arcade games.
It really sucks, but I think Microsoft has made a huge mistake in overlooking the Zune HD like this, a device that isn't even a year old. I can't imagine what would've happened if similar actions were taken against the Moto Droid (people would probably think twice before buying the Droid 2)."
Oops, and the next day something very similar to my hypothetical situation comes true. I think this current situation with the Kin is very similar, and it's pretty shameful of Microsoft to 'use' their customers in this way. So what happens if WP7 doesn't pan out quite as well as they're anticipating? Will they simply kill support for it a few months later in anticipation of something newer and better? Will people then justify it by saying "who would buy such a bad phone to begin with..."? The problem isn't that consumers are buying these products, it's that Microsoft is using them to achieve a powerful, robust, and popular mobile platform, no matter how many short lived non-supported iterations it takes. Supporting 'older' products and having backwards compatibility is such a burden.
Are they stopping production of the current ones? It looks to me like they are just not rolling it out to new markets or developing new phones.