this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025

114 points (97.5% liked)

Lemmy Shitpost

35926 readers

998 users here now

Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.

Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!

Rules:

1. Be Respectful

Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.

Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.

...

2. No Illegal Content

Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.

That means:

-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals

-No CSA content or Revenge Porn

-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)

...

3. No Spam

Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.

-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.

-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.

-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers

-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.

...

4. No Porn/Explicit

Content

-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.

-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.

...

5. No Enciting Harassment,

Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts

-Do not Brigade other Communities

-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.

-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.

-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.

...

6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.

...

If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.

Also check out:

Partnered Communities:

1.Memes

2.Lemmy Review

3.Mildly Infuriating

4.Lemmy Be Wholesome

5.No Stupid Questions

10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)

Reach out to

All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world

LillianVS@lemmy.world

WiildFiire@lemmy.world

Decoy321@lemmy.world

The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world

The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world

114

Microsoft spent two years and $1B developing the Kin mobile phone line, which failed after just 48 days in 2010(May 14-June 30) due to poor sales. They blamed Verizon for not promoting it enough (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 2 days ago by King@blackneon.net to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 25 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

So, do you remember back in like, 2004, when "feature phones" like the LG EnV or the Sidekick came out? It had a little more OS to it than a typical flip phone, they often had full keyboards, integration with intant messengers at the time, web browsers, etc? Some were more media focused and had mp3 oriented features, some were social machines for emailing and texting, some were more camera oriented, some more game oriented, you could get a phone that fit your interests.

Microsoft intended to shoulder into that market circa 2008. The year after the iPhone launched. It then took them two years and a billion dollars to develop. Through in-fighting with development of their OTHER mobile product, Windows Phone. And finally in 2010, the era of the iPhone 4, they released the Kin.

The Kin did not perform well, it was very mediocre hardware.

It had no app store or software library at all.

It couldn't access several instant messengers that were popular at the time.

The few people who did buy one returned them.

It wasn't Verizon's fault that Microsoft pulled a Microsoft and poured tons of money into arriving at a trend too late to compete with an overpriced mediocre product.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago

The Kin ran an operating system based on Windows CE.

And they wonder why it failed?

[–] giddy@aussie.zone 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Damn I miss that form factor

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't. I had a phone like that with Verizon and the top would fly off after opening it the 100th time. I would get a replacement and 3 weeks later the same thing would happen. After the 6th replacement they finally let me switch to a flip phone of the same value.

[–] Holyginz@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How hard were you opening it?!

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Not hard at all, it had a spring so you only had to push it a little bit and it would do the rest. The spring action was very snappy... I am sure other phone manufacturers got it right, but I am still traumatized.

[–] Lawnman23@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I had a HTC Evo Shift 4G back in the day, similar style:

Loved it for typing.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

it's crazy to me that american carriers can basically hold hardware ransom.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Granted this was 15 years ago. The market was a lot different than it is now.

That being said, most people still buy their phones through their carrier. So whatever the carrier sales reps get paid the most to sell is what they push people towards.

[–] bobo1900@startrek.website 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but carrier locked phones are illegal in many places (and always have been), aren't they still allowed in the US?

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

Well considering the article is about a product launch in the US... seems relevant. Carrier locking isn't illegal at all in the US.

They didn't even used to have to unlock it once a contract was over, not that most carriers at the time would allow unlocked phones on their network anyway, they do at least have to do that now.

[–] jafra@slrpnk.net 29 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I miss hardware-keyboards so much... My love was a Xperia Mini Pro. Damn fine phone.

[–] Medic8teMe@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago

I miss blackberry.

[–] AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social 5 points 2 days ago

I do and don't at the same time. I loved the classic hardware T9, but it gave me carpal tunnel.

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

You and me both and the very tiny amount of phones available right now with keyboards are just not that great. Blackberry still made the best phones ever IMO, the KeyTwo was fucking awesome.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 13 points 2 days ago

Someone should make hardware in that form factor that is essentially a Raspberry Pi-style machine one can run one’s own system on.

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No apps or games just social media. I see why it failed

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Eh. Apps were still fairly new in 2010. It launched around the same time as the iPhone 4. Heck, the iPhone was still officially only available from AT&T at the time.

It looked like a knockoff iPhone 3G with a slide out keyboard, so it was at least twice the size. Lack of apps and social media weren't what killed the Kin.

[–] twinnie@feddit.uk 3 points 2 days ago

Apps were still kinda new at the time and social media was shit hot. iPhones were still premium products and most people didn’t have one.

I think a lot of people don’t realise that when the iPhone first came out it didn’t have apps. They eventually released an upgrade so that you could pin webpages to the homepage. I remember Apple arguing that web stuff was so good now you didn’t need apps.

From what I recall around that time the Kin never really generated that much interest. It wasn’t being aimed as a product to replace the iPhone and was targeted at the kind of people who nowadays would sit on their phone and scroll TikTok. There was a lot of change in those days; social media was still pretty new, useful internet in your phone was pretty new (it’d been around for years but it wasn’t so expensive to this point nobody had used it, iPhone made constant internet connections a thing) touch screens were still new and sexy, and more I forget about. The idea that your phone was this little mobile computer that you carried around wasn’t really there yet and they were still mostly for communicating.

[–] sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

Microsoft seem to be the kin of failed mobile products

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

For context, in 2010 Apple had just released the iPhone 4 and BlackBerry had the Bold & Pearl.

Why doesn’t anyone want sliding keyboard phone that shamelessly looks like a knockoff iPhone 3G and runs none of those apps?

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Why is this on shitpost? Not complaining. Just curious. Sometimes the conventions of lemmy elude me, but I want to be on board.

[–] Hope@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I actually loved my Kin Twom. Didn't require a data plan, had a decent camera, was a joy to text on.

[–] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

me too actually!

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The point of the Kin was that it was supposed to create a new service tier in between dumb phones and smart phones with expensive plans. At the time phones came with 2 year contracts that subsidized the cost of the phone. A basic plan came with $175 worth of subsidy which covered a dumb phone. If you added $30/month for unlimited data, you would get $350 off the the up front cost of a smart phone.

Microsoft's idea was that parents didn't want to pay that much for a smart phone for their teens. But a teen would get plenty of benefit from something in between which would allow them to use a non SMS messaging service and browse social media. Plus it had a keyboard.

It's still Verizon's fault. But it wasn't lack of promotion. The Kin didn't make sense without the accompanying plan.