Wow, this thread seems so bizarre to me. Basically a collective sentiment of "I can't believe how stupid they are for having tried this thing that didn't work out."
"Failing" has become such a well-liked buzz word in the last couple years, unless you're a company people don't like, in which case it is awful.
Well, there is failing, and then there is failing. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Danger and create the Kin, and they are cancelling it only a few weeks after release. This is beyond embarassing for a company with the size and history of Microsoft. The people who managed this project had absolutely no clue what they were doing. Many, many heads should roll over this.
There is nothing wrong with trying and failing; instead, the problem a lot of us saw with Kin was focus.
From the limited samples we've seen, Windows Phone 7 seemed like a fairly competent response to the iPhone and Android. Whether MS can sell mobile os licenses in an age where Android is available to OEMs for free is an open question, but they seemed to be intensely focused on making it work.
And then Kin was announced seemingly out of nowhere. Suddenly MS had two, nonrelated mobile strategies. That Kin directly competed with the same OEMs that are the customers of the other mobile OS made the move seem even stranger.
This same story played out in the online music store business. Microsoft released the Zune and Zune Store in direct competition with their vendor-agnostic solution. The two platforms were mishandled to the point where the DRM on the mp3 files were incompatible. By splitting the focus on the company, they couldn't articulate a clear strategy and ended up ceding the market to Apple.
An op-ed from a former MS executive described the company as a collection of little kingdoms, constantly battling among each other, to the point where the only impression is one of chaos. Their mobile strategy is turning into the perfect example.
I think the consensus is to fail small and fail often.
Actually, scratch that, it should be: prototype often, so to keep failures small and easy to rebound from.
Regardless, you do not want to spend countless hours and dollars bringing a product to market only to realize it was a failure 3 weeks later. That's a rookie "big company with lots of money" mistake that Microsoft should have outgrown decades ago.
To quote Jason Fried on failure: "You might know what won’t work, but you still don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson."
After all their success, Microsoft should know better.
It's a vicious cycle. Next time there's a new Microsoft product people will be more wary of buying in ("Is it worth the risk? What if they scrap it like the Kin?"), leading to fewer sales, making another failure more likely.
I bet there's more to this than just a product failure. Why admit defeat so quickly and publicly? Even if the product itself was doomed to be a failure the timing is really suspicious. Why not just ignore the Kin for the next few months and quietly kill it only when WM7 is on the market? It's almost like they were looking for an excuse to kill the project and a few weeks of bad sales was a good enough reason.
Gossip suggests that the people in charge of the WP7 team were never happy with the Kin project existing at all. They always wanted it killed and absorbed into WP7 - the Kin's poor reception just convinced top management to finally grant them their wish.
They developed a family of phones, created marketing plans, made partnerships with carriers and it had to be the market to tell them it was a stupid idea?
Nobody in the thousands involved would have noticed that?
It's a great question. The same should be asked of many recent Microsoft initiatives. It's okay to roll the dice, but someone somewhere should have noticed.
My friends on the Kin team seem to have been caught by surprise. Those of us who watched for years from the outside: less so.
I imagine this was a case where everything was in planning and development for a long time and they thought maybe they could take a shot in the dark at recouping those costs, knowing full well that it would probably fail. Should have just canned the project and devoted the resources to Windows Phone 7 as soon as that was deemed the future for their mobile division. Textbook lesson in how not to handle sunk costs.
I'm curious as to what made anyone there think it was a good idea to introduce a new line of phones with a new OS separate from their main phone OS. WP7 seems like it's going to be a hard enough sell already; the smartphone business looks like it's going to be between Apple and everyone else, with everyone else running Android.
Man, Microsoft seems desperate these days. It's getting sad, really, like watching someone grasp at straws as they sink into quicksand... albeit the quicksand is made of gold.
I am sorry for all those talented folks who work there that have to endure this kind of mismanagement. Keeping their faith must require almost toxic quantities of corporate-issued Kool-Aid...
I was actually just at a Verizon store and got a chance to see both Kin devices in person. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by any means, but I was amazed at how bad they were.
The physical construction seemed fine, but the interface was so choppy it was hardly usable, and the colors looked really washed out. Noticeably worse than the LG and Samsung dumbphones sitting next to it.
With a browser and reasonably powerful components, it could have been a nice complement to the Zune lines. My guess was that it was just a field test for MS cloud services for mobile users, and for some reason they didn't want to do it with Windows Mobile.
When the left on life support back end data loss occurred we heard a lot about how terribly clueless the management of Project Pink was and how terribly unhappy the assimilated into Pink Danger employees were.
Disaster was expected, predicted, etc., the interesting question as others have noted is why did Microsoft take so long, spend so much money to realize it.
I always thought one of MS's great strengths is that they stick with things, even if early iterations are not successful. Windows and the XBox being two examples. Here they dipped their toes into into a whole new market (phones -- but not smart phones), and just a few months later they drop the whole thing. Not what I would have expected from MS.
Since there was never a third-party developer platform associated with Kin, they can kill it without pissing off developers as much as killing off Windows or the Xbox would.
That is definitely an important argument to make to counterbalance the argument that Microsoft is out of touch with basically everything and keeps failing to see the writing on the wall.
With Kin, I don't see them revolutionizing anything, so "just rolling with it" doesn't justify this mysterious venture to me. Xbox was different, though.
I guess they're still in a position where they can keep failing - or "experimenting" - without suffering too much for it.
This is sad. Microsoft is now a late to market type company. They don't want to invent anymore. They just want to see a market thrive and then jump into it. They invest a lot of money and then can rule all. By last months quote that Apple is now worth more, it seems like Microsoft is losing its edge fast. I wouldn't be surprised in the next 20 years, Microsoft loses on a lot of other areas they try to jump into.
Yet again, Microsoft attempts to target the cheapy market and ends up with lame results, while Apple goes for the high end and continues to create magic. What is that quote about the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results?
I knew the Kin was doomed when the $70/month plans were announced. All that's surprising is how quickly they pulled the plug.
Today's smartphone market reminds me of the airline industry prior to deregulation. Since all phones are sold for roughly the same price (on contract) in the US - and you don't get a discount for avoiding a contract - there's really no price competition between handsets. The Kin would have had a shot if it was a choice between a $200 Kin and a $700 iPhone or Android, but at the moment superior quality is the only differentiator between smartphones.
What do you guys think this means for the company? Would firing Steve Ballmer do anything for their feudal management structure?
This is a company with billions in cash, smart employees and profitable projects. It's sad that they can't get together and be seen as anything but the gang that sells software to my dad.
To me, this isn't really RIP... it's just, die, die, go away please, but learn from the mistake. That's my biggest fear; a certain, big $x amount was spent on this, and after folding it into the wash of profits, the important take-aways could very easily be missed.
If Microsoft made a portable device with Xbox live capacity, hmm, there's a thought - I'd actually consider researching into maybe consider buying it. I mean Xbox Live arcade got some good things right, only if they applied what they learned there to Win 7 mobile.
The rationale for the Kin would have been compelling up until the end of 2006. But that was an eon ago.
I wonder when shareholders will start to demand that MS stop throwing huge amounts of money away on foolish endeavors just increase the stock dividend.
The umpteenth MS product launch killed off within 3 years.
Aside from the particular products, this behavior over the past several years has caused MS to lose all credibility with me. I wouldn't trust them with any critical or even moderately important aspect of my life -- business or personal -- outside of their well established, cash cow products.
I have no interest in having my own investments (in time, not just -- or, rather, more so -- than money) subject/captive to this behavior.
[+] [-] evansolomon|15 years ago|reply
"Failing" has become such a well-liked buzz word in the last couple years, unless you're a company people don't like, in which case it is awful.
[+] [-] nickelplate|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikedouglas|15 years ago|reply
From the limited samples we've seen, Windows Phone 7 seemed like a fairly competent response to the iPhone and Android. Whether MS can sell mobile os licenses in an age where Android is available to OEMs for free is an open question, but they seemed to be intensely focused on making it work.
And then Kin was announced seemingly out of nowhere. Suddenly MS had two, nonrelated mobile strategies. That Kin directly competed with the same OEMs that are the customers of the other mobile OS made the move seem even stranger.
This same story played out in the online music store business. Microsoft released the Zune and Zune Store in direct competition with their vendor-agnostic solution. The two platforms were mishandled to the point where the DRM on the mp3 files were incompatible. By splitting the focus on the company, they couldn't articulate a clear strategy and ended up ceding the market to Apple.
An op-ed from a former MS executive described the company as a collection of little kingdoms, constantly battling among each other, to the point where the only impression is one of chaos. Their mobile strategy is turning into the perfect example.
[+] [-] makeramen|15 years ago|reply
I think the consensus is to fail small and fail often.
Actually, scratch that, it should be: prototype often, so to keep failures small and easy to rebound from.
Regardless, you do not want to spend countless hours and dollars bringing a product to market only to realize it was a failure 3 weeks later. That's a rookie "big company with lots of money" mistake that Microsoft should have outgrown decades ago.
To quote Jason Fried on failure: "You might know what won’t work, but you still don’t know what will work. That’s not much of a lesson."
After all their success, Microsoft should know better.
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
The Kin's short history is a long series of WTF moments from the market without any echo from Microsoft.
[+] [-] SandB0x|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsz0|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contextfree|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
They developed a family of phones, created marketing plans, made partnerships with carriers and it had to be the market to tell them it was a stupid idea?
Nobody in the thousands involved would have noticed that?
[+] [-] davepeck|15 years ago|reply
My friends on the Kin team seem to have been caught by surprise. Those of us who watched for years from the outside: less so.
[+] [-] johns|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marknutter|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naner|15 years ago|reply
zing
[+] [-] andrewcaito|15 years ago|reply
The physical construction seemed fine, but the interface was so choppy it was hardly usable, and the colors looked really washed out. Noticeably worse than the LG and Samsung dumbphones sitting next to it.
With a browser and reasonably powerful components, it could have been a nice complement to the Zune lines. My guess was that it was just a field test for MS cloud services for mobile users, and for some reason they didn't want to do it with Windows Mobile.
[+] [-] hga|15 years ago|reply
When the left on life support back end data loss occurred we heard a lot about how terribly clueless the management of Project Pink was and how terribly unhappy the assimilated into Pink Danger employees were.
Disaster was expected, predicted, etc., the interesting question as others have noted is why did Microsoft take so long, spend so much money to realize it.
[+] [-] whyenot|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contextfree|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|15 years ago|reply
With Kin, I don't see them revolutionizing anything, so "just rolling with it" doesn't justify this mysterious venture to me. Xbox was different, though.
I guess they're still in a position where they can keep failing - or "experimenting" - without suffering too much for it.
[+] [-] spoiledtechie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbranson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamble|15 years ago|reply
Today's smartphone market reminds me of the airline industry prior to deregulation. Since all phones are sold for roughly the same price (on contract) in the US - and you don't get a discount for avoiding a contract - there's really no price competition between handsets. The Kin would have had a shot if it was a choice between a $200 Kin and a $700 iPhone or Android, but at the moment superior quality is the only differentiator between smartphones.
[+] [-] jf|15 years ago|reply
It's interesting to note that one of the main points of the announcement is that the Kin team will be merged with the Windows Phone 7 team.
This is likely a move that has been planned for a while, but only announced today, since the official re-organization will go into effect tomorrow.
[+] [-] nickelplate|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] callmeed|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aspiringsensei|15 years ago|reply
This is a company with billions in cash, smart employees and profitable projects. It's sad that they can't get together and be seen as anything but the gang that sells software to my dad.
[+] [-] sabj|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samratjp|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thought_alarm|15 years ago|reply
I wonder when shareholders will start to demand that MS stop throwing huge amounts of money away on foolish endeavors just increase the stock dividend.
[+] [-] treblig|15 years ago|reply
Good for them for consolidating, but it honestly amazes me that the project even got this far.
[+] [-] hernan7|15 years ago|reply
They must indeed have some units left to sell still -- just today I heard an ad for the Kin on the radio.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|15 years ago|reply
Aside from the particular products, this behavior over the past several years has caused MS to lose all credibility with me. I wouldn't trust them with any critical or even moderately important aspect of my life -- business or personal -- outside of their well established, cash cow products.
I have no interest in having my own investments (in time, not just -- or, rather, more so -- than money) subject/captive to this behavior.