back to article Microsoft's KIN goes to hell: Site offers comfort

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 …

COMMENTS

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  1. Nux Vomica

    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?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    Site down...

    I'll miss that 'kin phone.....

    1. Mike48US

      What

      Hmmm that little mark in front of the kin ( ' ) does stand for "FU" doesn't it?

  3. guttersnipe
    FAIL

    What were they THINKING?

    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.

  4. Mage Silver badge
    Alert

    Next

    If Zune and WinMo7 don't do good over Christmas 2010, maybe the whole phone & Zune division will be closed next year.

    MS need to concentrate on what they do well *and* make money from.

    Xbox could be in trouble too.

    1. Chris 244

      "MS need to concentrate...

      ...on what they make money from."

      There, fixed that for you.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Err no

      Xbox is not in trouble- if that division starts bleeding due to the Zune and other fails, they will just re-organise. The Xbox pretty much shits money.

      1. ThomH

        The Xbox was a massive investment

        The first Xbox was launched in 2001 but the Xbox Entertainment and Devices Division didn't manage to report a profit until 2008. I'll wager the whole multi-year project is still technically in the red but it'd be ridiculous to can it now.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I bet the next of kin are on high alert

    seeing as that would be Windows CE and Windows Phone 7...

  6. Alan W. Rateliff, II
    Paris Hilton

    Shortest lived product from Microsoft?

    And here I thought "Bob" held that title.

    Paris, holding something.

  7. tom 24

    The what?

    I believe the title nicely sums up my entire reaction.

  8. Giles Jones Gold badge

    The price you pay for Windows

    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.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Crippled smartphone

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It was Verizon's "joke", not Microsofts

      Verizon set the contract price, not Microsoft. They killed the Kin. Microsoft might have let it die rather than fight with Verizon, saving their breath for the 7Phone.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Something had to fail

    I suspect that a pretty face kept the Kin in play for a while, just don't know how it made it out of the gate.

    When I saw the first press release about Kin, I was surprised... at best it was going to undermine the potential of the W7 Phone.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    ummmm

    "Welcome ,

    you are signed in as the site administrator."

    Honestly, I just clicked on El Reg's link, I didn't mean to...

  12. Chas
    WTF?

    WTF?

    When I visited the site, it showed me logged on as the site administrator!!

    Blimey :D

    =:~)

  13. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    And now...

    I better make a tribute site for the tribute site. Because right now it's "down for maintenace."

    Or not. Honestly they had ads for the Kin One and Kin Two here, and they looked hella-lame.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    New strategy

    Quick, kill the mobile phone product before anyone has time to compare it with an iphone!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Death site

    It has already been shut down. Meh. The guys from Forever Missed have no humor.

  16. Stew

    But Verizon will still flog you a dead horse...

    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

  17. Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik

    The what phone???

    Never heard of it...

  18. Havin_it

    Missed

    Looks like the site's overlords didn't appreciate the humour - all that's left now is a po-faced message about its takedown.

    Probably wasn't mawkish enough.

  19. Tim Bates
    FAIL

    Nexus One?

    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!

  20. Tharglet

    ForeverMised

    Nice to see they proofread their pull-down message.

    Was sort of confused why "mised" was the name for the site... til I noticed it was a typo XD.

  21. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    FAIL

    Classic case ...

    Of thinking they know what the market will want without asking or understanding the punters. They jumped on a fad and failed.

    Anyone remember Cybiko, or the Bush IBX Internet STB ?

  22. George of the Jungle

    Short timers

    This lasted even less time than Microsoft BOB? Blimey.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    I am just wondering

    If it's possible to bring out a "Microsoft FREE" version of The Reg?

    Getting rather sick of so many opportunities to put shit on a company I learned to hate so long ago.

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