∞ Microsoft unveils the Kin phone

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In its effort to compete with Apple and Google in the lucrative smartphone market, Microsoft on Monday unveiled the Kin One and the Kin Two. The phones are targeted to young people on the low-end of the market. The phones will have access to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, as well as a built-in Zune player.

Microsoft launches Kin phones [The Washington Post]


  • Robb

    Look at those stupid looking keyboards. I mean, who in their right mind would want a QWERTY keyboard on a telephone with keys the size of a grain of rice? You practically need a knitting needle to accurately strike a single key. I know I would. I mean, I could hire pre-pubescent child labor from India who have spent their formative years weaving rugs in sweatshops to be at my side to dial numbers or that keyboard or type email and SMS messages but who WANTS that solution. These companies designing these handsets are so backward looking, so adverse to change that they are blinded by stupidity.

  • Jack Brewster

    Why does Microsoft continue to fragment their market? With Window Phone 7 around the proverbial corner, why not kill this off during the design process and bring it's features to the new phone? Sometimes it seems like they just decide "Hey, we've got a bunch of R&D into this, so we still have to ship it." At least they got Verizon to buy them.

    Harry McCracken mentions the Kin Studio service that's available for the phones(http://technologizer.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-kin/). It's at least a compelling social service and I hope for MS' sake they include support for it in WP7. But, we are talking about Microsoft, so who knows. Maybe only in the Ultimate WP7 OS?

  • http://intensedebate.com/profiles/moeskido moeskido

    Is this what Microsoft made out of the Sidekick?

  • http://intensedebate.com/profiles/tunegardener tunegardener

    In classic Microsoft fashion, they take a more-interesting concept name and turn it into a stupid one for the release product. Origami-UMPC, etc. "Pink" isn't brilliant by their usual standards, but serviceable. "Kin" is a really stupid, hard-to-pronounce name. I want to see this project take a massive dive.

  • STL

    U.G.L.Y.

  • Robb

    I don't get what happened to the corporate culture at Microsoft. These guys aren't stupid. They hire the best and brightest in Redmond but still they just can't get it. Twenty years ago, Microsoft and its campus in Redmond was like Google – MS was one of the coolest computer software companies in the world to work and play. And it must be the "rule by committee" that kills innovation. A bunch of guys sitting around and driving design and engineering to the lowest common denominator. The golden era at Microsoft is definitely PAST.

    And Google, with Android and corporate desire to dominate is headed in the same direction. Android's cell-phone operating system is a bad imitation, just as Zune is a bad knock-off of the iPod. They seem to lose their focus on making the product or device awesome for the end-user and start internecine battles with lawyers, law suits and patient law.

  • Eric

    A thousand years from now, the exhibit at the Musuem of Nautral History will place the Kin in an exhibit on the topic of backwoods, banjo-playing rubes and the technology that finally reached them and brought them into mainstream American culture.

    They'll have a quote on the caption for the exhibit, from an early adopter: "I can hear mah kin talkin' on that there thing."

  • capt.greedle

    Wow, everyone here is totally missing the point. The question is – as a teen device, how much will the cell plan cost? The lower end AT&T 900 plan will cost you $1500/yr for an iPhone – just ask your teen to kindly keep phone chatter under 45 minutes a weekday. If the Kin carrier can undercut that by $400/yr ($800 for the entire contract) – damn straight I'll give it a look. My brand loyalty to Apple doesn't extend to my children, I'd just as soon invest that money in a new Macbook Pro.

  • http://www.deanbreaker.com/ Amy

    Is this what Microsoft made out of the Sidekick?

  • http://www.greenworldinvestor.com Abhishek

    Consolidation in the technology market is creating technology behemoths competing in large parts of the technology spectrum.Microsoft is going to sell smartphone Kin at low prices to counter its prime competitor in the software – Google which recently launched the NexusOne. It will also go head to head with Apple ,another one of its competitors in the MP3 player and PC market.Read more athttp://www.greenworldinvestor.com