Daring Fireball: Microsoft sold 503 KINs

By on Jul 7, 2010 at 10:30 PM
mobile July 7, 2010

kin-one-open

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a “well-placed” source who informed him that Microsoft sold a mere 503 KINs before the handset was given its end-of-life papers on June 30th. Speculative rumors of the device’s dismal sales figures have been tossed around willy-nilly over the last several week, and five hundred was a popular guess; others quoting anonymous sources pegged sales at “over 1,000 but under 10,000.” One Microsoft employee told website Business Insider:

“We had a huge launch party on campus and I bet that party cost more than the amount of revenues we took in on the product.  As an employee, I am embarrassed.  As a shareholder, I am pissed.  It’s one thing to incubate products and bring them to a proof-of-concept to see what works, but it’s something else to launch.  I suspect we launched because we felt like we HAD to so we could save face because we were trying to build buzz, but overall – huge fail.”

Ouch. Anyone out there know somone who picked up a KIN?

UPDATE: PocketNow is reporting that the KIN’s Facebook application actually registers itself when a user activates it. Currently, FB is reporting that the KIN has 8,810 active users, making Gruber’s 503 number very inaccurate.

[Read Daring Fireball] [Read Business Insider]

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101 Comments

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  • Onni

    It’s sad when 8810 sold is supposed to be the good number.

  • James

    Josh buddy… I am sorry you bought that phone for your girlfriend, I hope she didn’t dump you for it.

    Compare it to an iphone? Please, it wouldn’t matter if BGR himself praised the phone, it would not have sold another unit, only would have sent his blog in to the dumpster.

    No one is hating on here, you are mad bc you bought a turd, your girl friend is pissed bc you bought her the biggest POS to ever be released in the US and now you are calling people haters to help yourself feel better about the turd you bought.

  • Scott

    Why is anyone reporting anything that Daring Fireball posts? That site is the biggest waste of internet fanboyism drivel in existence.

  • peter b

    Someone needs to get hacking on one of these.

    Android port anyone?

  • mike

    Anybody who takes DaringFireball completely seriously deserves to be fooled like this. He is the Matt Drudge of the Apple world. Posting sensationalist half-truths to support his position (Apple).

  • CouldBEinteresting….

    Maybe RIM should buy the remaining stock. No, I am serious, OK maybe not…

  • Arthur P. Johnson

    I predict that the hardware for the little one will be cloned like crazy — it’s very cool — and the whole problem wasn’t the product but the PRICE of then phone and especially the plan. Shame on you (and dumb!), Verizon.

    • skyy_flyer

      WEll, I haven’t personally dealt with one but they do sound like they are pretty data intensive phones that would go over the 25MB plan in no time… blame Microsoft for making the phone aimed at young teens use so much data to require the $30 package.

  • Arthur P. Johnson

    @Peter b, great idea, and Kins can be bought for a penny, I believe.

  • Pasha

    Gruber stated that 503 devices were sold “before” the product line was canceled. I’m guessing Verizon didn’t promptly pull the phone from their shelves when it was axed and therefore it stands to reason “many” more were sold after the decision was made.

    • Ken Jackson

      That’s way unlikely. Do you think after they were killed there was some rush to go buy them?

  • Lynne

    I would support the 8K number considering VzW has over 16K “doors” (distribution points) throughout the U.S. I think the actual sales could be a bit higher than 8K, really. Even if it was twice that, Kin is still a failure, though I would expect Kins will start popping up on eBay as collectors items soon.

    • champaigno

      i was just thinking the same thing lynne

  • John Preston

    Gruber’s 500 sold might possibly an accurate estimate because PocketNow’s facebook KIN application doesn’t distinguish the devices sold toactual customers or those given to the stores/employee as demo phones!

  • Barkley

    Free phone with $10 data plan…and maybe this would’ve sold 15,000 units.

  • Lime

    503…lol

  • Eric

    The problem with the Kin was that it had Microsoft Bob as the operating system.

  • Zack

    Microsoft FAIL lol

  • Jason goddard

    Most may be vzw emp demos lol I have one

  • Tim

    This was actually a great device and idea that was killed right out of the box. I own a cell phone store and when we went to turn it on the device goes straight to set up without any way to show off its capabilities. This is a death blow to any device. People want to see it work. The same goes for the new Palm Pre plus and Pixi. We couldnt sell any of those either until Palm was kind enough to send us a pair activated. Once we got a fully functioning device we started selling quite a few of both Palms. My guess is that if the Kin was not bricked out of the box they would have sold a ton more,

  • Brad

    You know, the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi just got a huge morale boost. They WAY outsold the KIN. =)

  • Ms. Incredible

    Bad news, I can officially confirm both of your numbers are wrong. The store I work at sold a KIN yesterday. So that brings the number to either 504 or 8,811. Were taking bets on when it comes back, only 29 day’s left !

  • http://alghienkad06.student.ipb.ac.id/ thea

    lol

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