{ 2010 07 13 }

Microsoft Kin and Zombies

I think by now most folks have read the reports that only 500 kins were sold. If that number is true, its shocking. Its horrid! Its one of the worst launches ever (we sold 500 in our first few days, and we were absolute nobodies). In fact, I remember a friend of mine who works on Windows Mobile telling me “do not launch this product, it will not sell”.

But I’m not here to bash Microsoft. I’m here to bash you. Its not Microsoft’s fault. Its yours.

A few years back Microsoft bought Danger, the maker of the ground-breaking Sidekick. The Sidekick is a demagogue in the world of phones, they along with Palm paved the way for the modern smartphone. Messaging-oriented, stylish designs, QWERTY keyboards, trackballs and more, they pushed the bar on what a phone could do. People were buying lots of Sidekicks, it was the hot, must-have, Paris-Hilton-stolen-celeb accessory.

The iPhone, the Treo, the Moto Q, the Sidekick, the Blackberry Pearl, Samsung BlackJack, a plethoria of HTC devices that were clunky that nobody bought, and lets not forget about the very functional voice brethren of RZRs, KRZRs and PBLS. There was a plethora of choice & people exercised their right and bought interesting, different devices. Nobody I knew had the same device as me.

Fast forward to the past 12 months in mobile:

1. Palm launches a bunch of stellar devices with groundbreaking software on it. These are not only cool devices, but they were priced accessibly for the average person. RESULT: dead, sold to HP.

2. Microsoft, with lots of the old Danger/Sidekick team they bought, launch the Kin. Again, a really good device. Looked great. RESULT: sold 500 of them and shutdown the bu.

3. The iPhone 4 launches and sells millions in days.

4. Motorola flatlines, only to move to Android, which saves them.

So did Palm and Microsoft make bad products, while Google & Apple mad great ones??? No!!! They all have had issues. The iPhone 4 doesn’t make phone calls for the love of god, and the battery and laggy performance on every Android device is horrendous.

Apple + Google monoculture, thats the real problem here. You, the people, are buying Apple products for no fricking reason. What annoys me most is how the iPhone uses the artist class, traditional anti-monoculturists, and turns them all into iPhone lovers. What gives??? Its confounding. The iPhone has zillions of flaws, just like its competitors. Why don’t you folks experiment and buy devices from extremely successful device makers like Microsoft and Palm?

I actually wonder if its backlash from the plethora of choice from a few years back. I think people got sick of buying half-functional, slow-ish, hard to use devices (Moto Q – cough cough). The supreme example here is everything WAP. I feel like WAP-browsers set back the internet on the phone ages. It was awesome in its back-end, low overhead design but terrible in its usability. WAP left a huge opportunity for somebody to think about and solve browsing & data… that company was Apple. A frustrated pile of people who were tired of spending money on half-working devices that took 4 minutes to get a single web-page that was half of what it should have been flocked over to Apple iPhone. Then I think people stopped wanting to go to the AT&T store, talk to some sleazy sales rep who knew nothing, and figure out which phones actually worked and which didn’t. They just bought iPhone because everybody else was and it seems to do the trick. No more mystery of if my phone will work or not.

But I think we’ve gone too far now. We need to stop being zombie purchasers of iPhone and Android devices. We need to experiment once again and try new devices that launch in the marketplace.

Posted by dan on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010, at 10:01 am, and filed under Uncategorized.

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