Kin shame
Since Microsoft announced it was shelving its own-branded phone - the Kin - a mere few months after launching it, the media has been queuing up to pummel Microsoft for such a poor effort in a manner reminiscent of the hysterical woman scene in the film Airplane.
Things came to a head yesterday, when Business Insider published the thoughts of one current Microsoft employee who chose, understandably, to remain anonymous.
"Embarrassment all over campus from the rank and file about the Kin announcement," said the source. "No one thought it was a great product to launch anyway to begin with, credibility in mobile space is further eroded, as if that were even possible!"
Oh dear, and there's more: "We had a huge launch party on campus and I bet that party cost more than the amount of revenues we took in on the product," said the source.
"As an employee, I am embarrassed. As a shareholder, I am pissed. It's one thing to incubate products and bring them to a proof-of-concept to see what works, but it's something else to launch. I suspect we launched because we felt like we HAD to so we could save face because we were trying to build buzz, but overall - HUGE fail."
On reflection, even if the plan was always for Danger technology to be incorporated into Windows Phone 7 - as Microsoft has spun the failure of Kin - that doesn't in any way mitigate such a rubbish product launch.
If, as always seemed to be the case, Kin was essentially a public beta test of the cloud syncing tech, then a) don't charge so much for it, b) don't big it up as an amazing product launch in its own right and c) wait until WP7 comes out and spin it as an evolution of Kin, or something. Microsoft's many PR representatives much be really enjoying the Kin backlash, not.
