The now-dead KIN was not a bad idea (read our hands-on with the platform). Microsoft's ambitions with the KIN were sound. As much as the iPhone and, lately, Android handsets garner all the press attention, smartphones represent only a minority of phone sales—a growing minority, but a minority all the same. There are many, many people who don't have a smartphone, and don't even particularly want one, and they easily outnumber smartphone users.
Redmond wanted to be a part of this broader market. The company was already a big player in the smartphone market with Windows Mobile; the KIN was a product of its ambitions beyond that space. So rather than starting from scratch, in 2008 Microsoft bought Danger, the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick line.
The choice made sense. Danger's products were not just phones; they included an online component, too. Sidekick users had their contacts, calendars, e-mails, and photos all stored online, and the handsets all included instant messaging. This combination of (phone) software plus online services clearly resonated with Microsoft. Sidekicks weren't smartphones, but their online tie-ins meant they were also more than "dumbphones."
Danger's products also showed real focus. The Sidekicks were aimed at teenagers and young adults, and the hardware reflected this. SMS and instant messaging are particularly important to this demographic, because talking on the phone makes it hard to multitask—taking a phone call when you're just chillaxin' with your friends can be annoying. Danger threw in cameras, of course, because a phone is how you take pictures these days. And the hardware was all fairly robust.
KIN was supposed to be the spiritual successor to the Sidekick. Similar target market, similar emphasis on SMS and instant messaging, but bolstered with better hardware, even richer online integration, and support for the all-important Facebook. Even the hardware styling was not a million miles away from that of the Sidekicks, though the novel rotating screen was replaced with a more conventional slide mechanism. The Sidekick was popular, so shouldn't its successor have flourished?
Pricing problems
Well, we know now that it didn't. After rumors of sales numbering only a few hundred, it looks like the true figure is just a few thousand. More than 500, certainly, but below 10,000. That's pretty astonishingly lackluster.
KIN, like the Sidekick before it, was a device aimed at teenagers and young adults. It should have been cheap to buy and cheap to operate. But it wasn't. The pricing was, frankly, nuts: $150 for the KIN ONE or $200 for the KIN TWO (albeit with a $100 mail-in rebate available for both) along with call plans that started at $60/month. From day one, it didn't stand a chance. Though the hardware prices were slashed, the plans remained prohibitively expensive.
Verizon, for its part, did little to promote the device. Microsoft ran extensive advertisements for the product, but Verizon left the devices to languish in dark corners at the back of its many stores. In-store promotion is important—as Google learned with the Nexus One—but the KIN never received much of it.
The fundamental reason for these delays, the source claims, was a problem that is all too familiar in the software industry: Not Invented Here syndrome.
The switch to Verizon also meant that Microsoft lost the Sidekick branding. Though the handsets were generally known as Sidekicks, they are, properly, called Hiptops; that's what Danger called them. T-Mobile, the biggest seller of Danger's devices, branded them as Sidekicks, and that's the name that stuck. The value of the pre-existing Sidekick userbase was wiped out by the move to Verizon, and though there were benefits (Verizon's network is more extensive than T-Mobile's), abandoning existing users and strong branding was a high price to pay.
KIN's software also had flaws. The biggest omission was probably calendar syncing; Sidekick had it, KIN didn't. A software update has been promised, but in light of the product's cancellation, it's not clear that it will actually materialize. Opinions on the phone software varied—consensus seems to be that it was overall pretty mediocre; not horrifically bad, but not particularly good, either.
The KIN did have one consistently well-received part: KIN Studio. KIN Studio provided a central place for managing all the pictures and videos that KIN users produced, providing easy and effective dissemination of that information into social networking sites.
Infighting and outfighting
On the face of it, it's astonishing that Verizon would treat the product this way. The pricing model meant that the product would never stand a chance; the lack of promotion crippled it yet further. This is a strange thing to do for an exclusive product with a successful predecessor, especially when Microsoft was willing to do so much promotion of its own.
A source speaking to Engadget gives some indication of why Verizon acted this way. The mobile operator was allegedly set to give KIN attractive pricing for both handsets and plans—pricing them in reach of its target audience—but Microsoft couldn't get the hardware finished in time.
The fundamental reason for these delays, the source claims, was a problem that is all too familiar in the software industry: Not Invented Here syndrome. Danger's phone software was Java-based, but rather than continuing to build on this codebase—a codebase that was already driving a range of successful products—the "strategic" decision was made to scrap everything and build on Windows CE instead.
This decision, it is claimed, set the project back by some 18 months. Verizon lost patience with Microsoft, and so dropped its teenage-friendly pricing structure in favor of the smartphone-level costs we see now.
Part of the delay may have stemmed from internal Microsoft turf battles. There are allegations of chronic infighting between the Windows Phone and KIN management. Comments on the (in)famous Mini Microsoft blog point at a remarkable level of bad blood between the groups. Mini Microsoft, a blog written by an anonymous Microsoft insider wishing to make the company leaner and more efficient, with a strong direction, attracts many anonymous comments from Microsoft employees past and present.
Though the authenticity is always something to be concerned about with such blogs, the comments, if accurate, paint a startling picture, and one is worth quoting at length:
Glad you named KIN, as I used to work there until few months ago. KIN was a great and ambitious project...until May 2009. The business, marketing, design vision was just spectacular! In May 2009, Mr. Myerson, decided to kill it because it was competing with his own baby, WP7. Since WP7 was not ready (still today is by far ready!) the exec told him KIN would continue. As retaliation, he killed the support of his team to KIN project. Guess what? KIN team had to take over a lot of base code postponing all the value added apps+services. Now you get why there is lack of apps on KIN. Who will win in medium/long term? Mr Myerson obviously, that's why I decide to leave.
"Mr. Myerson" is Terry Myerson, head of Windows Phone engineering. If true, it means that not only was KIN lumbered with the overhead of targeting a brand new platform, it also didn't have access to the engineering resources that might possibly have served to make such a switch worthwhile. Instead of consolidating expertise (surely the biggest benefit to a unified operating system base), poor management meant that the effect was the exact opposite, with the KIN team having to do the work that, by rights, should have been done by the Windows Phone team.
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