Did you know Microsoft spent $1bn on phones it killed in 48 days?
The Kin One and Kin Two burned two years of development and roughly $1 billion before Microsoft pulled the plug
Microsoft spent close to two years and an estimated $1 billion building the Kin One and Kin Two, then killed both phones just 48 days after they reached Verizon stores in May 2010.
Few tech products have collapsed that fast after that much investment, and the story behind the collapse started long before launch day.
By the end of the decade, Microsoft certainly required a reboot for mobile products. The introduction of the iPhone changed the dynamics for touch screen technology; the Android OS was rising fast, while Windows Mobile continued to live in a desktop environment.
By purchasing Danger Inc., the company which developed the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphone, Microsoft obtained expertise about youth, socially orientated, internet-savvy individuals who did not fit the Windows Mobile mould.
The resulting phones, built by Sharp, tried hard to build a distinct identity. Kin Loop pulled updates from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace into one feed; Kin Spot let users drag people and content together before sharing; and Kin Studio automatically backed up messages, photos, and videos to a browsable web interface, a genuinely ahead-of-its-time idea years before iCloud Photos made it standard.
The phones did not have an app store, third-party applications, games, a calendar, or an instant messaging application, and the touted Twitter application could not handle retweets or direct messaging.
The Kin One retailed for $49.99, while the Kin Two was priced at $99.99 after rebates, although a Verizon voice plan costing $39.99 plus another $29.99 for a data plan raised the monthly price to about $70.
Internally, it had apparently become known that Microsoft had moved the software from the Java-based original Danger platform to Windows CE, a switch which Ars Technica said later added 18 months to the development cycle of the device.
Verizon slashed prices in late June, and two days later Microsoft cancelled Kin's planned European rollout, folded the team into Windows Phone 7, and pulled the plug entirely.
The famous "48 days" figure runs from the May 13 in-store launch to that June 30 retreat, though the phones had actually gone on sale online a week earlier
