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NOW MICROSOFT HAS ITS OWN PHONES TOO: INTRODUCING KIN |
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| Date Added: April 17, 2010 04:27:09 PM | |
| Author: Drazr | |
| Category: COMPUTERS & INTERNET | |
Microsoft announced KIN yesterday. KIN is “a new Windows Phone designed specifically for people who are actively navigating their social lives”. By this Microsoft means the 15-30 age group; presumably they assume that those of us who are more mature either don’t have social lives, or that we’re happy navigating them with our iPhones :-) Anyway, there are two devices, cleverly called KIN One and KIN Two. Both are made for Microsoft by Sharp, and both look just like all the leaked pictures we first saw last September. Both phones feature slide-out qwerty keyboards and touchscreens and come with support for Microsoft's Zune media platform (which will also be a major feature in Windows Phone 7). KIN is designed to be the ‘ultimate social experience’ that blends the phone, online services and the PC with ‘breakthrough new experiences’ called the Loop, Spot and Studio: The Loop is the KIN homepage; it brings together your favourite people and the things you love—on your home screen, in real time. The Loop aggregates different social networking streams (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Windows Live) and allows users to update multiple social media accounts at once The Spot. Share almost anything – photos, texts, web pages – with almost anyone by simply dragging them to a “spot” on your phone. Since the Spot is always on your screen you don’t have to worry about open ing a new application to share and upload. The Studio is an online service that provides users with unlimited storage for photos and videos. Indeed, any photo or video content created with the phone is automatically published up to KI N Studio, so you should never run out of device-based storage as a result. Microsoft calls this ‘lifecasting’. You can explore all these features at the new KIN website to watch this video demo. I note that cloud services are absolutely key to the whole experience, but that Microsoft is somewhat coy about whether a premium is payable for the data tariff required to support this. Almost as interesting as what's included is what's being left out. There won't be any games, apps extensibility or an app store, though Microsoft says it will upgrade the devices over time, wirelessly, and could add new functionality. There is no memory slot, and no calendar either. Perhaps most surprising is the absence of instant messaging functionality - Microsoft says we all prefer texts and Twitter now, but I wonder if Microsoft’s own MSN team agrees with this? The same demographic that KIN is targeting are (or were until recently?) the biggest users of MSN. (Compare the Microsoft KIN experience, which brings social media together via a dedicated device with Ericsson’s Life Store, where the service brings social media together regardless of what device you use). KIN phones will be available through Verizon in the US from May, and through Vodafone in Germany, Italy, Spain and UK in the autumn. No pricing announced yet. Positioning: KIN vs Windows Phone 7 This is Microsoft's first entry into the mobile market with its own handsets. But the company is trying to tread a fine line. The company is pitching the devices as a side project to Windows Phone 7, which is due at the end of this year. Indeed, the official position is that Kin is not a Microsoft-branded phone. It’s a Sharp phone, and Sharp is just one of many of Microsoft’s mobile OEM partners, they say. But this is stretching the truth, of course – Microsoft has worked closely with Sharp on this, and no other vendor is in a position to produce a KIN device. Therefore I’d say it might not say ‘Microsoft’ on the label, but a Kin phone is clearly a Microsoft product (like an Xbox, for example). But by doing this, Microsoft risks alienating its other mobile OS partners. (Just like Google has worried its Android partners by branding and marketing its own Nexus handset.) The challenge for Microsoft will be to maintain the KIN series as a separate brand from its core OS product. I think they’ll probably manage this quite comfortably – after all, Microsoft has lived for years with conflicting interests between different product groups. So to the obvious question: will Microsoft have a hit with KIN? The point to remember is that with this device Microsoft is not trying to compete with iPhone or Android smartphones. They’ve got Windows 7 for that (if the phone vendors take it on board and produce some good models). No, with KIN, Microsoft is targeting a different market. I think they’ve got the right features to appeal to the teenage social networking market, but the key will be the price. Will it be offered cheap enough, and with a sensible contract that parents are prepared to pay for a KIN for their teens? If so, then it could be a very attractive alternative to a feature phone for the youth market. |
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