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Microsoft Unveils 'Pink' Phones As Kin One and Two
adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft has recently launched two new phones known as the Kin One and Kin Two, previously codenamed 'Pink.' The phones are designed to appeal to social-networking-focused teens, which is probably why the marketing team has tried to spice up the packaging of the phones. According to a Microsoft official the phones are named Kin because they 'knit together ... kindred spirits.' The phones have a keyboard. The Kin One has a 5-megapixel camera, while the Kin Two's 8-megapixel camera can shoot 720p HD video. Both cameras include an LED flash. The One has a mono speaker, the Two's is stereo. One includes 4GB of on-board memory and the Two has 8GB. Both Kin phones have touch screens. According to the hands-on, the Kin phones are based on the same Windows CE core as Windows Phone 7, and they have an IE-based browser. These phones have no downloadable apps, no games, not even a calendar. They're not meant to be expandable smart phones; instead, very good messaging phones."
"No apps. Less functionality than an iPhone. Lame."
See, Taco, this is how you make correct prophecies...
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Trolling is a art,
...and yet, apparently, without any way to do IM (at least Wikipedia page and links there about them says so)
Seriously, WTF? I could understand their lack of expandability, software-wise (especially if the price is right), if the "social" package they provide is right (though by no means unique - see INQ phones). But no IM? How did that get through?
One that hath name thou can not otter
"These phones have no downloadable apps, no games, not even a calendar. They're not meant to be expandable smart phones; instead very good messaging phones."
Nice job, Microsoft. Way to ignore the growing trends in favor of your own way. After all, you certainly know better than those lousy consumers.
In all fairness, though, they'll probably sell like hotcakes in the niche market they're designed for. I just don't see it as a very big market.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?
I just can't take these products seriously. Instead of this niche marketing, microsoft needs to focus on something with broad appeal. There's a reason iPhone beat them in that space, and this is exactly it.
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Whatever they do now seems to be a pale caricature of reality... why is this the case?
Were they always this clueless?
It's sad... so much talent.
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But then it became more apparent that it's competing against the EnV and the Rage. What Verizon calls MultiMedia phones. It will likely be on the lower priced data plan (or maybe they'll make one between teh $10 and $30/month package). Given a choice between an EnV or a Kin, the Kin is an easy choice. If MS were to clean up the multimedia phone space at Verizon, I think you'll suddenly begin to see a new market emerge. Although it's a surprisingly tough market, because I think a lot of it hinges on the data center and carrier integration.
Watch how this plays out. I think it possibly flops, but could be iPhone like huge, but to a totally different market.
We know that Apple protects their branding to a ridiculous degree... essentially arguing that any name with an "i" in front it threatens their intellectual property. So I wonder if Amazon will have anything to say about this new product? If I saw a news story about the "Kin Two", and the headline didn't qualify it as a Microsoft thing, my first assumption would be that it's a new version of Amazon's ebook reader.
Is it just me, or do the marketing folks at Microsoft have some serious deficiencies when it comes to naming products? Lets not forget The Monad Shell.
I guess this is what happens when they try to be creative. Otherwise everything is called either Windows, Business, or Office Something.
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Ars seemed to like them well enough.
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The phone takes 720p HD video. It also has speakers and so I'm going to make a wild ass guess here and suggest that it plays MP3s also.
"Kin"?
Well, at least it'll sell well in Appalachia, enabling teens to keep track of which cousins are dating which.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"No apps. Less functionality than an iPhone. Lame."
Yes, but you get something you don't get with Apple. You get abused by Microsoft.
Is this the Windows Vista of phones, the Windows ME of phones, or the Zune of phones?
It looks like the bet they're making is that including Facebook and Twitter support is a complete replacement for the traditional IM client. I'm not so sure that decision is so terrible from a marketing perspective. The trend I'm seeing is that old school IM clients just aren't as popular among less serious users nowadays; I get Facebook messages from all sorts of people I know would never bother getting a "real" IM account, or who have never figured out they already have one via Gmail.
Ultimately the real limitations of this phone aren't going to apparent until the matching data plan is announced. How much it will cost to download all the Twilight ringtones and background images that will obviously be introduced for this phone? These are the important questions. So far we already know that updates from some sites are put into 15 minute batches, presumably to same on network bandwidth, which doesn't bode well.
I suspect that since it has no downloadable apps, that "bleeding edge" isnt really a concern.
Only needs a CPU good enough to run the included apps. Probably dont even need a GPU. With application control, you also get reliable antialiasing (only fonts that look good included) so perhaps a regular 100DPI display may be good enough (iphones and recent ipods sport a 200DPI display, if I am not mistaken,) the battery probably wont need to be nearly as good, the memory probably doesnt need to be nearly as fast either...
There are probably lots of ways to cut costs here without sacrificing much beyond that initial sacrifice: no downloadable apps
The iphone reportedly costs ~$200 in parts
"His name was James Damore."
If anything kills them, it's the MS connection.
Why would the tween-teen market give a damn about the geek's distate for anything Microsoft?
Awesome! I can’t wait for the homemade porn.
* For values of “teen” equaling 18 or 19, of course.
From what I could understand from the presentation, everything goes through Azure.
Which means that all the posts you make go through Microsoft's data centers before they get posted on facebook/twitter/whatever.
This is all just a scheme for Microsoft to gather user data and to monetize on it. A data-grab scheme, plain and simple.
Tag this: Do Not Want
Y
Who's running things over there?
It's sort of like a Blackberry for young people. Or the Hasbro/Tiger Clueless Organizer, version 2.0.
It's about time for the toy companies to move into the phone space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle ...in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".
In the corporate world especially, upper level politics and kickbacks and alliances always end up chucking creativity out the door, grinding it into the pavement, and writing off as an R&D expense as it's scooped into the dust bin.
Google avoids this by letting employees work on their own pet projects that get picked up for major development as they gain popularity in their internal culture, which seems to be quite good at picking winners. Apple has so far escaped this only because it's run like North Korea. There's one maniacal prick and marketing genius at the top of the food chain, and everyone else is meaningless.
"Monad" -- a condition where you have a single (instead of paired) gonad, due to birth defect, accident, etc.
And by the way, which one is Pink?
--- squirted from my Zune.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Onboard storage, however, is not the point, according to Microsoft executives. In fact, both phones serve as a portal to the cloud, storing photos, videos and other data on the network, rather than on the phone. Neither phone, for example, has an SD card slot, executives said. 'Thousands of customers walk into our stores every month and ask us, how do I get photos off this phone?' said John Harrobin, Verizon's vice president of digital media.'"
Oooh, "portal to the cloud." Well, then, that answers all criticism.
The younger generation just totally gets putting their pictures in the cloud. Verizon will transmit and store them for free. The cloud storage will be accessible to, compatible with, and interoperable with with their friends' iPhones. The risque pictures they upload will be secure and private. The concept of storing them in an SD card is way too technical for the target market to comprehend. Not.
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