The Kin is dead.

Wow.

Just…wow.

The news  just broke on C|Net.  And here's the word from Microsoft.

Microsoft Spokesdrone said:

"We have made the decision to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7 and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned," the company said. "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."

Not sure who's going to buy 'em. 

I'd love to brag and say I saw this coming, but that would earn me a deserved 'Well, duh!' Fact is, everyone saw this coming except, most worryingly, Microsoft. If they were too vain or too clueless to see this thing was a dud from day one (especially with those tariffs) then it doesn't bode well for their mobile plans in the future.

Steve B, go see Steve J and ask him (politely) how it's done.

In this way, everything will be concentrated on WP7.

Go MS GO

Dovella said:

In this way, everything will be concentrated on WP7.

Go MS GO

Yes, they can quadruple their efforts and screw it up for times as quickly.

Dovella said:

In this way, everything will be concentrated on WP7.

Go MS GO

That's something that should have happened the moment the WP7 team decided to do a new ground up UI instead of evolving the classic WM UI. Kin never should have see the light of day after that point.

Ray7 said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

Yes, they can quadruple their efforts and screw it up for times as quickly.

There may yet be a next of Kin. (sorry blowdart)

CKurt said:

Ray7 said:

*snip*

One can only hope they will bring the "Kin Studio" to WP7, everybody loved it...

 

Kin failed because of pricing (hardware and data plan). The data plan was a full fleshed smartphone plan for a phone that could do less then a  smartphone. The starting pricerange was higher then an iPhone (witch had the same data plan).

I think the real reason it failed was because it was ever so slightly pointless. 

DCMonkey said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

That's something that should have happened the moment the WP7 team decided to do a new ground up UI instead of evolving the classic WM UI. Kin never should have see the light of day after that point.

Bingo.

exoteric said:

Ray7 said:

*snip*

There may yet be a next of Kin. (sorry blowdart)

I see what you did there 

CKurt said:

Ray7 said:

*snip*

One can only hope they will bring the "Kin Studio" to WP7, everybody loved it...

 

Kin failed because of pricing (hardware and data plan). The data plan was a full fleshed smartphone plan for a phone that could do less then a  smartphone. The starting pricerange was higher then an iPhone (witch had the same data plan).

I wonder what will happen to the Kin server infrastructure. Will it get the same level of support that the legacy Sidekick servers got or will they just show mercy and pull the plug?

CKurt said:

Ray7 said:

*snip*

It was not, it was a good vertical product for it's genre. At the price of a phone that was very horizontal in the marketplace.

Out of curiosity, do you own one?

CKurt said:

joechung said:

*snip*

No I don't , but if you read reviews it clearly states "Everything will come down to price point" and that because it's good at what it does. It just doesn't do that much (read: vertical product not horizontal)

I think it was a good concept that was poorly executed. You are right, there is a vertical that the KIN fit into. It fit perfectly into the pointless device vertical. There is a market for devices that do nothing but social networking. The tween market is ripe for that sort of thing.

Maybe there will end up being an optional KIN WP7 Hub that does the same thing.

CKurt said:

kettch said:

*snip*

pointless device  !=  do nothing but social networking

 

So it's not a pointless device? It might be pointless for you because social networking is not the only thing you use your phone for.

I actually didn't mean that as a negative against the device. My comment was worded poorly. I have plenty of toys that in the grand scheme of things are pointless. I guess the idea is that a lot of consumers would like a phone that only does social networking, but does it well.

Like you alluded to above. How narrowly do you want to define your vertical? Adding Zune functionality was a good move, because it did give the device a much broader appeal. I know some people who would probably like a well executed KIN-type device, and if it made calls, that would be kind of cool too.

However, I think splintering it off into it's own SKUs was a mistake. Like I said, most of the unique functionality of the KIN devices could be handled by a well made WP7 Hub. I agree that as soon as the WP7 vision started to gain traction, they should have canned the project. However, as is the nature of things, it's possible that they had gotten themselves into contracts with carriers and couldn't just walk away.

CKurt said:

kettch said:

*snip*

Indeed, but somehow the "Kin Hub" should really be a free application in the MarketPlace. Not integrated into the core OS. Not many business people would like that. Because, many stuff in the WP7 OS allready is social anyway.

 

You don't however have 'a spot' or the layout of 'the loop' is not as attractive /childish in the Peoples hub. One could degrade the people hub on the homescreen and replace it with the "Kin Hub" given a different view on the same contact information.

Engadget seems to have a pretty good handle on what happened. Their version makes a lot of sense.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/what-killed-the-kin/

I'm interested in the rumor of Sinofsky wanting to bring the mobile division into the Windows org. It could go horribly wrong, but there is promise. Wasn't there talk of a black project out of MSR that was looking to bring Windows and CE closer together. If they can pull it off, they might end up with a situation like Apple has with the OSX kernel. They could have a compact microkernel that could be adapted to whatever purpose they needed. It would be cool to have that kind of consistency across servers, desktops, slates, phones, and embedded devices.