Kin is already dead.....

Well, they definitely pushed it pretty hard. Especially with use in the new TV show "Pretty Little Liars".
 
Very interesting article on its marketing: http://gizmodo.com/5516318/hey-microsoft-enough-with-the-hipsters

For some bizarre reason they made the same mistakes they made from when they first advertised for the Zune: Coopting urban hipster culture.

The device is already questionable (who wants a phone with limited capabilities tied to a full data plan?), but the marketing kind of blew my mind. Who were they trying to sell this to, a very tiny segment of people that already own iPhones and iPods while simultaneously alienating everyone else? Microsoft's marketing budget eclipses Apple's R&D and marketing budgets combined, and it completely obliterates what Google spends on marketing, yet they just can't get people to bite.

They need to ace whoever their ad agency is and really step it up if they're going to make the Windows 7 phones palatable to the general public. None of this "hip" urban BS that nobody cares about.
 
microsoft will make a splash this fall with windows phone 7

they are going to do it right this time.
 
microsoft will make a splash this fall with windows phone 7

they are going to do it right this time.
Click to expand...

I think you should change "will" with better. MS is in some serious trouble in the Mobile market, not too mention, they are way behind. I've been holding out with my crappy Storm and waiting for Windows Phone 7 but this is just another example of why people should be leary about waiting for their next release.

From crappy implementation with Windows Mobile on shit devices, to the Kin failure, it's hard to put any faith in MS in the mobile market.

Having said all this, I'm a Microsoft guy through and through..but i'm leaning to one of the Android Devices like the Droid X. MS will have to show me more in the coming weeks that shows they are moving in the right direction..if not..here comes Android...
 
You can't market things like cell phones to kids. Kids want grown-up phones to do kid stuff with. If you sell a stunted kid-targeted phone at grown-up prices with grown-up data plans, nobody will buy it.
 
That is a surprise. At least they quickly recognized it's a lost cause and didn't waste a lot of time trying to develop a concept that wasn't going anywhere.

It is quite nuts when you consider this was to be the successor of the Danger. So their business plan:

1. Buy Danger, maker of the very successful Danger Hip-top.
2. Stop the development of future Danger products, move development team over to project pink.
3. Lose all the data for a large number of Hip-top users
4. Release nothing for two years.
5. Release the Kin, a phone seemingly designed for 13 year olds which costs as much as an advanced smartphone and requires a top of the line data plan.

What a bunch of bafoons. The marketplace would have been better off had they simply never purchased Danger.
 
Ars posted an excellent post mortem on the Kin and what went down internally: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise.ars

Apparently the changes in management infrastructure that allowed Microsoft to save Windows and Office development didn't extend to all of their divisions. Read the whole thing, good stuff.

The article also pointed me to this excellent blog from a Microsoft employee. It corroborates what I've been hearing about for years form friends within the company. If they want to compete with Apple and Google and avoid being the next IBM, they really need to fix their internal managerial structure: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
 
Microsoft won't become the next IBM. They've already revamped their key product lines...

Mobile right now won't make or break the company.

From what we see of Windows Phone 7, they're copying Apple entirely too much, when they need to be copying and improving upon the superior (and faster growing) model of Android. Huge mistake I think.
 
I already said that managerial restructuring helped save Windows and Office. The same should extend to the rest of the company, I don't think that any sane person can argue with this. The fact that the simple act of buying Danger ended up killing it says so much.

This is an even more egregious waste of money than the billions burned by the Xbox division. The Xbox billions are an attempt to establish a beachhead in the living room, to get consumers hooked on the Xbox line and provide long-term possibility, and while possibly misguided (there's clearly little brand loyalty between hardware generations), they do at least represent a strategy of sorts. There's a method to the madness.

But this? Microsoft took a company with a successful product line and destroyed it. The Sidekick successor, KIN, was hobbled by a plainly stupid management decision, such that its failure was assured. To make matters even worse, T-Mobile has just canned the original Sidekick. There's essentially nothing left of Danger now. An innovative company with exciting products was killed by what appears to be stubborn managerial incompetence.
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As for Windows Phone 7, it is already looking like the most restrictive smartphone platform out there, even more than the iPhone which at least has the advantage of a thriving developer community. Already we are seeing no multitasking (hopefully this comes later) and advertising that shows up even if users aren't using ad subsidized applications or web browsing (wtf?). It isn't like this is their first restrictive device either; the XBox 360 is far more proprietary and restricted than the PS3. I'm not against it, but that's just how it is, and it isn't like this sort of thing is foreign to Microsoft.

In any case, Microsoft has been a fat pig for way too long. Kin is one more case study in that, the second big one this year after seeing HP decide to spend billions to buy Palm for WebOS instead of going with the Windows 7 based slate that was the "highlight" of Microsoft's CES presentation. Either way, MS can ride on Windows and Office for a while until these other things shake out (or don't).
 
Serpico said:
In any case, Microsoft has been a fat pig for way too long. Kin is one more case study in that, the second big one this year after seeing HP decide to spend billions to buy Palm for WebOS instead of going with the Windows 7 based slate that was the "highlight" of Microsoft's CES presentation. Either way, MS can ride on Windows and Office for a while until these other things shake out (or don't).
Click to expand...

With 5 billion phone subscriptions out there there's room for everyone. Windows 7 Phones will do pretty well if for no other reason other than its quite different from the iPhone and Droid. As for the resitctions, few people really care about most of that stuff, they just want a simple, useful and reliable smart phone. There's already an army of developers for the platform since it leverages .NET and Silverlight, been getting up to speed on using the emulator. Nothing ground breaking but boy its a clean UI and developing apps for it is simple and there's plenty of developers out there for it.

And as the the Windows 7 HP Slate, sure its emabarssing that HP isn't coming out with it, but that's an embarssment for HP not Microsoft other than Balmer actually talking about tit at CES. There are quite a number of intresting Windows 7 slate devices coming out over the next 6 months with two coming by Labor Day, the ExoPC, which is the same price as a 32GB iPad and the much more exspensive but most intresting slate in terms of hardware probably to come out this year, the Libretto W100 which is supposed to actually be out at the end of next month though in very limited numbers, but I'll do what I can to snag one. I know that you think that Windows 7 isn't a good touch OS but plenty of people find it works great especially considering that you can often use the same Windows software that one already has. Office 2010, particualrly Word, Excel, Outlook and of course OneNote work great on a touch screen and are far more capable than anything you're going to see for a phone OS based slate anytime soon.
 
I'm confident that Microsoft will come out with a stripped down Slate OS to compete with iOS and Android. The point is to have an OS that can run on extremely light hardware with very long battery life and still be responsive and affordable. Windows 7 cannot accomplish that on current hardware, something or other gets compromised, whether it is practical performance, battery life, or size/weight. Then there is the whole UI issue, but I know there is no convincing you that there are actually problems there. :)

As for marketshare in the phone arena, I completely agree, but note that marketshare isn't what I've been discussing, it is internal mismanagement. But yeah, being #1 is completely overrated, all that really matters is managing to thrive and be profitable within your niche. There is plenty of room to exist beside Apple/RIM/Android, the only question is if Windows Phone 7 can carve one out after coming out three and a half years after the iPhone and two years after Android. We'll see.
 
Windows 7 CE is already available and should be on devices coming out later this year, I believe Asus has one coming out this fall.

I've been using multi-touch on Windows 7 since the public beta came outlast year so I'm well aware of the issues involved with it more than most. You VASTLY overstate them and they really are issues with applications, not the OS. It just seems according to you that Windows 7 is unusable with a touch interface let alone productive. As far as the list of things you mention size, weight and battery life, the one critical thing you forgot was functionality. The greatest touch UI in the world does no one any good it the device running it can't actually accomplish the task and this is why full OS touch devices will always be in demand simply because some tasks need the power of a full OS.

The way I see it you value form and I value function, both have their place.
 
Serpico said:
I already said that managerial restructuring helped save Windows and Office. The same should extend to the rest of the company,
Click to expand...
Of course. But not doing that won't break Microsoft.

It was a sensationalist statement to say they'll become the next IBM by not taking care of their mobile division :rolleyes:




heatlesssun said:
much more exspensive but most intresting slate in terms of hardware probably to come out this year, the Libretto W100
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Yes.... drooooollll.....
That thing looks f'n sweet. This is that tablet that consumers wanted, this is the tablet that Apple should've come out with. The downside is as you say, cost... A grand is going to be steep. I think it's well justified for what it is (It costs a whole lot more to make than the iPad), but still...

Serpico said:
The point is to have an OS that can run on extremely light hardware with very long battery life and still be responsive and affordable. Windows 7 cannot accomplish that on current hardware
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LOL
:rolleyes:

You clearly haven't seen what Windows 7 is capable of in that arena.
 
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