Who the 'kin hell thought up that name?
Never heard of this in the first place, but have they no speakers of colloquial English in their marketing department?
A tribute website has been created to mourn the passing of Microsoft’s short-lived, horribly unpopular KIN mobile handset that was aimed at the yoof market. KIN - which came in two different models - hit retail shelves in May this year, only to be yanked by Microsoft last week following poor sales. It’s understood that the …
The ads were unbelievably lame. Their implied "benefit?" You can use it to get in touch with your EX. How appealing is THAT?
And what does it mean that the phone is especially designed to manage your social life? Don't ALL phones help you do that now? What on earth was the draw of this brain-dead marketing atrocity? I can't even figure out how it made sense to anyone at MS, even the most sycophantic boardroom parasites.
Apparently they started the project with another OS then had to rewrite the whole thing on top of Windows CE.
By the time they had the networks weren't so interested and so the deal offered was poor, making the handset pricey and the monthly costs pricey. Two things you don't want with a yoof phone.
So you had to get a 2-year service plan that was the same as an Android phone or an iPhone plan, but you really didn't have a smart phone with the KIN. So you would be paying the outrageous service plan cost with a phone cut-off at the hips. That's just plain stupid and people figured that out quickly.
For an extra $100 on the same service plan ($2000 over 2 years) you could get a real smartphone.
Then the name. "Kin" is what the people in the backwoods of the US Appalachian area refer to as "family". If you have "Kin" you probably don't even have a cell tower anywhere near you and you probably have dozens of moonshine distilleries close by. And your daughter is also your cousins daughter as in "next of KIN".
No wonder Ballmer fired the people in charge of this mess (before it even launched if I remember right). I don't think Ballmer is an idea man, but he's got to have more brains than the Windows Mobile leaders did.
Do a deal with the carriers with a similar device that fits into a family plan for under $10 per month and you might have had a hit, but for $80 per month it was a joke, Microsoft.
Those nice people at Verizon are still pushing the Kin like crazy trying to sell off what they have. I was on the phone with them trying to resolve an issue with my blackberry and they said, Well you are up for your new every two and you could get a nice Kin smartphone for free, in fact we could give you two of them so that you can give a family member one as well.
Now will I take advantage of that offer..... Mmmmmmm Well my wife mother and sister are not the same person....lol
10,000 in 6 weeks! And people were making fun of Google's "poor" effort when they only managed a measly 20,000 in the first week of release of the Nexus One.
Google's figures may well have included promotional giveaways, etc - but I dare say some of the Kin "sales" were the same... If I was a retailer left with a few on the shelf, I'd be trying to give them away too!