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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
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.
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.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
Ars seemed to like them well enough.
Living With a Nerd
Tweens and Teens sounds like a pretty big market to me. Depending on the price they'll either do alright or fail miserably. If Jr want's a $200 smart phone but one of these can be had for $50 you can bet there's going to be a lot of parents that take something like this as a compromise. If the options are spend $400 (+$30 per month) or something at a more reasonable price that gets by with a smaller data plan, parents will jump all over it (lest they be labeled 'bad parents' by their kids for not getting them what they want).
Time will tell, we don't really know enough about the phones to say much at the moment. To me they look like the almost-but-not-quite smart phones that are already on the market today. MS might be too late to the party to see major sales.
I hope this device will be as successful as the zune.
It's running zunes os after-all.
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.
"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.
Actually, it's probably a good move for the same reasons that the iPhone was a good move. Smartphones, while growing still aren't the majority of the market. Lots of people want "just a phone". Kids, however, want messaging, but the parents that pay for it probably don't want smart phone fees or for that matter, connection to the internet. There was a story on /. just yesterday by a parent asking how to filter his teenage kids access to the internet. It seems like a perfectly valid market that is probably no more niche than smartphones. Not everybody needs or wants a smart phone, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who want a messaging phone. I think the real test will be if it followed good design and they are indeed "very good messaging phones."
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."
I'm guessing that niche is "parents who can be convinced by advertising that they're buying what their kids want".
It worked for Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge...
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.
"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.
I was talking to my 23 year old sister about this phone. Here's an interesting snippet
[17:02] Sister: it looks cool
[17:02] Sister: too bad it's not sprint
[17:03] Me: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what price details emerge this month
[17:03] Sister: it's cool you don't have to get apps for it, the features are built in
[17:03] Me: haha all the nerds are holding that against it
[17:04] Sister: and the camera capability is good!
[17:04] Sister: i don't want to have to hunt around for 20 apps
[17:04] Sister: it would work right away
Not only did she not care about the lack of app store, she saw it as a bonus. It looks like MSFT was definitely listening to a consumer segment when they designed the phone. It will be interesting to see just how many people like my sister there are out there.
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And by the way, which one is Pink?
--- squirted from my Zune.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes, but is she hot?
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
But in Apple’s case, the pillow is filled with totalitarian control and reality distortion poison, while the MS baseball bat is of the soft kind, but infected with all kind of diseases with long incubation times.
In other words: With MS you make your computer a zombie. An Apple computer makes a zombie out of YOU! ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.