Journal symbolset's Journal: Rumor: 500 Kin Phones 9
When Microsoft's Kin was released a month ago, it came with the usual sequence of tittilating leaks (project Pink), a swell of coverage leading to liveblogging of the release press conference, and an advertising blitz impressive in its scope. Since it's supposed to be a social phone of course it has numerous fansites including Facebook and Twitter. Of course there's a Wikipedia page where we learn that these phones aren't just a derivation of the SideKick, but a preview of the much anticipated Windows Phone 7:
"Both KIN and Windows Phone 7 share common OS components, software and services. We will seek to align around a single platform for both products as well as consistent hardware specifications."
Today there's a rumor circulating that Microsoft and Verizon have sold a total of 500 phones, of both models. It derives from a single unsourced rumor post on the Silicon Alley Insider blog on the Business Insider website. The news is going viral. Absurd as the idea is, Verizon doesn't give sales numbers and Microsoft is unlikely to comment. Support for the notion that the phone is doing poorly can be seen at Amazon, where the phones selling for $349.99 and $500 initally are now available for $0.01 and $29.99 respectively, and a month after general availability you can still be the first person to review the products.
Even Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNET is asking the question.
So I'll ask you: Did you buy this phone for yourself? Your kids? As a review item? As a gag gift? Have you ever seen one in the wild? What do you think this means for Windows Phone 7?
Hadn't heard of this phone until today (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Well at least someone from Seattle has stepped up to review the Kin One on Amazon now. Not yet for the Kin Two. In the meantime the "500 kin phones" meme has gone so viral you can get it in at least seven languages on Google, and some of them are quite clearly automatically transliterated twice to some other language and back. Somebody was criticizing Bing for having a tiny fraction of the link count that Google did - but I looked it up and now Bing shows 11.2M hits for "500 kin phones," which is a win fo
Too late to market? (Score:1)
I think this phone is meeting a need that either doesn't exist or has already passed, and thus is doomed to failure. I'm not quite sure which it is, though. On one hand, it's being marketed as a social networking phone. Except I get the impression it doesn't do anything except Facebook and make phone calls, and I want my expensive smartphone to do a lot more than that, like the Altek Leo phone due out in Q4 2010. http://www.fonearena.com/blog/18927/altek-leo-14mp-camera-with-a-phone-pics-and-price.html [fonearena.com] So t
Oh, wow. (Score:1)
This feeble little /. journal article has now been found by some aggregators like uberview [ubervu.com] and Reddit. Probably due to the fluke of being randomly assigned the short URL "chaos" on Reddit, it now has 246 comments [reddit.com]. It's getting spread all over Twitter.
Goodness, there's an awful lot of interest in this weak rumor.
Re: (Score:1)
Story is picking up steam now (Score:1)
Seattle Weekly [seattleweekly.com]
Yahoo! Tech [yahoo.com] (links back here)
A bunch of other places now. You can still be the first to review the Kin Two on Amazon.
And... Kin is dead (Score:1)
Kin is dead [cnet.com]. There's not much else to say.