After only 24-months, brief even in the world of mobile phones, Microsoft has permanently retired the Kin. The Kin was advertised as the latest and greatest in social networking for phones. A niche that should have offered it some legitimacy and press apart from its huge rivals iPhone and Android.

The Kin was neither revolutionary or evolutionary. Neither its features nor its price were liable to turn heads. In fact, recent reports say that, apart from press samples, Verizon has sold only about 500 of these, out of their 2000 stores; that’s 1 Kin sold for every 4 Verizon stores, a dismal failure when compared to Apple and Google.

The Kin’s niche was that it was designed for social networking. It runs a precursor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. I would call this a bridge product. It has some of the features of Phone 7, but its not a full-blown implementation. While tells me that maybe Microsoft should have finished that up and shipped a finished product before asking us all to buy what is essentially an expensive stop-gap aimed at bandaging their falling market share.

At one point, the mobile phone world was cut between Windows CE \ Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Since then, Apple and Google have really come out with worthy, superior products, and Microsoft is rushing to catch up. I can’t see how Windows Phone 7 can be the iPhone\Android killer that Microsoft wants it to be, especially with these articles citing it as an Ad Delivery Platform. Unless they’re going to give it to me for free, they can keep their ads, and I’ll keep my business somewhere else.

So the Kin is dead and nobody cares. It’s time for Microsoft to step up with a finished product instead of a half-baked idea. With Apple and Google retaining most of the mobile phone market share, Microsoft’s product will need to be superior in order to increase market share. Superior, Kin was not.

Sources:

How Many Kins Did Microsoft Sell in Two Months? (Tom's Hardware)
Microsoft Kin is dead (Engadget)
Microsoft Kin One and Two review (Engadget)