Heading for the mobile grave quicker than a Palm smartphone, Microsoft is apparently killing off their KIN One and KIN Two devices, after only six weeks after the launch of the social networking handsets.
According to a Matt Buchanan article over on Gizmodo, the death of the Microsoft KIN phones comes by way of “sources close to Microsoft,” and effective right away, Andy Lees is merging the KIN phone team into the core Windows Phone 7 team.
Apparently the main reason for the burial of the Microsoft KIN handsets is sales, poor sales, although Microsoft has never confirmed that only 500 KIN devices were sold, however it is quite apparent the mobile space response to the devices was under-whelming to say the least, mainly due to price.
Basically the Big Red priced the KIN handsets monthly service way too high for its target audience, and even dropping the purchase price didn’t offset the high monthly cost and thus Microsoft KIN is now dead and buried. According to Microsoft they will not ship KIN handsets to Europe but will continue to sell current Kin devices in the US with Verizon.