Actually KIN Sold More Than 503 Devices
pocketnow.com
pocketnow.com
There are about 2000 Verizon stores (http://www.vzwcareers.com/Why/Test.aspx?lid=//careers//why+v...), and I bet each one had an activated KIN on display. So that brings the number down to 6810. Subtract from that people who returned their phones within the 30 day window (I don't think the return deactivates the Facebook app).
But even if the real number were 8800, or even 88,000, that's nowhere near the 1 million+ Apple did on the first day for iPhone 4, or even the 500,000 estimated HTC EVOs sold.
It was obvious that it would fail, and from reading the Engadget story, it appears that even MS knew it would fail.
I would be interested in knowing how much of Robbie Bach's and J. Allard's career rested on this product. Because, consider this, if reports are true, and MS knew this was a failure, why was Robbie Bach, the President of E&D presenting this phone at the Kin special event? They should have had a second tier GM doing the briefing. But I think at that point they already knew Robbie was toast, so might as well throw him out to the wolves.
In anycase, I was just giving you a hard time about bringing up sales numbers comparing arguably the greatest flop in MS history vs arguably the greatest launch of any consumer electronics product in history. But clearly, I'm the only one who finds humor in that. :-)
Right up there with Microsoft Bob (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob)!
They ended up doing the worst thing possible... a nice featurephone, with high-end smartphone pricing
I agree...maybe this strategy would have worked in 2008. In fact, that was the year Sprint released the Instinct, a nice featurephone with smartphone pricing. They even started requiring the everything plans with that phone. If we could rewrite history and swap out the Instinct for the KIN in 2008 (right after Microsoft acquired Danger), Microsoft would have looked a lot more forward-thinking, and they would be in great shape to launch Windows Phone 7 as a successor to KIN. Alas, that didn't happen...
Right up there with Microsoft Bob
Kin could have very deep and lasting repercussions. It makes Bob look like a minor annoyance and Vista look like a success in comparison. SteveB doesn't call me up and tell me how to write code, so I won't criticize him. But I think it's fair for shareholders to ask him to detail exactly what he was doing as a manager while all this transpired. He's a manager, he shouldn't have any difficulty showing off how well he managed.
I agree...hearing about the cancellation of KIN completely turned me off of Windows Phone 7. My last 2 phones have been Windows mobile phones, but I just jumped ship for Android with the HTC Evo. Microsoft is on shaky ground with Mobile.
If they turn out to be good, I'll get one in 18 months or so. But the Android trajectory is looking pretty great.
Not to mention other outlets like BestBuy that sell Verizon products.
The "over the weekend" phrase is marking when he was told, not when the sales took place. This interpretation is further supported by the "that" which immediately follows it, so as to separate the part of the sentence about the act of telling from the part of the sentence about that which was told. And further supported still by the use of the term "grand total" in the phrasing "grand total of #X before time_Y".
That pedantic enough to prove the point?
Accounting for registrations by unsold units is a more likely source for the difference in numbers.
What Microsoft did makes no sense. Now, I can't trust that Microsoft will support their products for longer than it takes them to get their first screen scratches. And, how could a carrier consider entering into future agreements with Microsoft when this one led to so much public embarrassment? That such a decision was made suggests significant internal managerial distress (to be euphemistic).
$1,000,000,000 divided by 503 units is $1,988,071.57 per unit. Call it two million dollars.
$1,000,000,000 divided by 8,810 units is a mere $113,507.38. Call it a hundred grand.
From where I'm standing, losing two million dollars per unit is a lot more than losing a hundred grand per unit. Let's give Microsoft some credit for keeping losses at such a manageable level. Who knows, when the final numbers come out they might have managed to lose even less, maybe as little as fifty grand per unit!
The number of units sold may be higher or lower. It's all guesswork at this point.
1,000,000,000 - ($400 x 503) = $999,798,800 lost
1,000,000,000 - ($400 x 8810) = $996,476,000 lost
The difference is negligible.
edit: In case it isn't clear, my point is that there's a lot of ways that number can be inaccurate and bloated. How many prototypes and test devices are there? How many demos?
They obviously tweak their numbers to save face. They must do it at all levels and the fact this ill-conceived aberration actually made into production and hit the market must have involved some pretty heavy sugarcoating of actual numbers.
It's a charlie-foxtrot, no matter how you look at it.
* how many were given away for free
* what was the time of the '503 sales'-report :)
X,600,000,000.00 rather than 6,600,000,000.X0
Big difference :P
Whatever is going to happen to KIN's real person, Rosa?
They are already disappearing her from Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/watch/148231/rosas-journey-intro
(Seriously, that's what's been reported for MS employees including many/most? on the Kin team.)
I am inclined to believe Gruber. If he stakes his reputation (very important to his massively inflated ego) on a specific number, it means he's satisfied it's correct, and that's a pretty strong vote in my book. Could be wrong of course but in the absence of hard evidence I go by gut & human nature...
And I am pretty sure if someone told me that they had sold 503 phones, I would have asked some more questions.
"They only sold 503 phones on the weekend" "What, for the enture country" "Oh no, just at this one store in Arizona, and they were only open for 1 hour, and they ran out of stock". "Oh, not so bad then"
> I can’t vouch for the following, but a well-placed little birdie told me over the weekend that they sold a grand total of 503 Kins before they pulled the plug. 503.
That phrasing does not put absolute confidence in the number. It is very possible he was misinformed. But 8000 (as pointed out, a probably over inflated number) is still pathetic.
Still, Gruber is a rumor spreader, not a trusted source on anything.
Or by the people who wrote it. Microsoft.