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]
