By Greg Mills
I read an article that had me checking my calendar to make sure April Fools Day had not sneaked up on me. I was quite sure it is fall and April Fools Day jokes are out of season.
"Electronista" is running a news article that indicated that, never learning from a good beating, Ballmer and the gang at Microsoft that can't shoot straight is trying again to sell Kin, an underpowered/overpriced smart phones through Verizon. When you can't sell a pile of cow crap because people understand what it is you are trying to sell them, cutting the price won't help.
The Kin was pulled after only six weeks, and there were rumors that they only sold 8,800 units in the grand launch a few months ago. It is unknown how many of the 8,800 Kins that were sold were sold to loyal Microsoft staff. The problem is that the Kin phone is sort of a bastard phone, not quite a full smart phone and a little bit more capable than a standard, just a cell phone with no extra features. The problem is that the Kin sold at a smart phone price and required a smart phone level of service but didn't deliver the true smartphone experience.
Never able to fully grasp that when the market refuses to buy something, repackaging rarely works. The Kin won't run Windows Vista 7 and still has all the clueless attributes that doomed it the first time around. The problem for Microsoft is that they sunk at least US$250,000,000 into developing the Kin and hate to write it off. The Kin, Zune, Vista OS, Windows Music store and other disastrous projects at Microsoft haven't taught them anything.
The new Kins are doomed due to a lack of common sense features. They have GPS chips but don't do anything with the GPS but geotagging pictures. No map function. Kin has a crappy design that will tend to cause you to scratch the screen, they come with tiny screens in the first place, choose from 4GB or 8GB memory, etc. See http://www.electronista.com/reviews/microsoft-kin-one-and-kin-two.html if your really care to know more about Kin.
I have considered setting up a new charity to offer disadvantaged billionaires kids iPads and orally challenged CEOs of tech companies tongue reduction surgeries. Any one care to contribute?
That's Greg's bite for today.
(Greg Mills, is a Faux Artist in Kansas City. Formerly a new product R&D man for the paint sundry market, he holds 11 US patents. He's working on a solar energy startup, www.CottageIndustrySolar.com using a patent pending process of turning waste dual pane glass into thermal solar panels used to heat water. Greg writes for intellectual web sites and Mac related issues. See Greg's art web site at www.gregmills.info ; his email is gregmills@mac.com )
