Microsoft Kin

Dead in 48 days

Shut down
19902026

Microsoft Kin was a pair of social-networking phones aimed at teenagers, launched on Verizon on 13 May 2010 and cancelled 48 days later after reportedly selling in the hundreds of units. The Kin Studio cloud service followed it into the grave in January 2011.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2008
  2. 11 February 2008 Acquisition
    Microsoft buys Danger

    A reported ~$500 million for the Sidekick maker; the team starts Project Pink.

  3. 2010
  4. 12 April 2010 Feature
    Kin One and Kin Two unveiled

    Social-first phones with cloud archiving via Kin Studio.

  5. 13 May 2010 Launch
    Kin goes on sale at Verizon

    No apps, no games, no calendar, smartphone-priced data plans.

  6. 30 June 2010 Shutdown announced
    Cancelled after 48 days

    European launch scrapped; the team moves to Windows Phone 7.

  7. 2011
  8. 31 January 2011 Shutdown
    Kin Studio shuts down

    Users' cloud-archived data goes with it.

The site through time

Browse microsoft.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2010 2011 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Microsoft 2010–2011 Founded Built on the ~$500M Danger acquisition; team moved to Windows Phone

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Microsoft cancelled the Kin phones on 30 June 2010, 48 days after they went on sale, and shut down the Kin Studio cloud service at the end of January 2011.

Our analysis: Kin was a social phone for teenagers that could not run apps, had no calendar at launch, and was sold on Verizon's expensive smartphone data plans. Two years of development and a $500 million acquisition produced a product priced against the iPhone and built against a market that had already chosen apps.

History [edit]

Two years, $500 million, 48 days

Kin grew out of Microsoft's 2008 acquisition of Danger, the company behind the beloved T-Mobile Sidekick, in a deal reported around $500 million. The idea was reasonable: a phone built entirely around social networking for teenagers, with a clever Kin Spot for sharing by drag-and-drop and Kin Studio, a cloud service that automatically archived everything on the phone onto a web timeline. That last feature was genuinely ahead of its time.

Everything around it was wrong. The two devices, Kin One and Kin Two, shipped on 13 May 2010 with no app store, no games, no instant messaging and not even a calendar, while Verizon charged full smartphone data-plan prices for them. Reviewers were merciless, and estimates of first-run sales ran to the hundreds of units.

Cancelled before Windows Phone

On 30 June 2010, 48 days after launch, Microsoft cancelled the line, folded the team into Windows Phone 7 and scrapped the European rollout. A brief, cheaper revival as feature phones later that year went nowhere, and Kin Studio, along with users' archived data, shut down on 31 January 2011. Kin remains the reference point every time a technology company kills something quickly: it lasted seven weeks.

Similar projects

Zune Microsoft's answer to the iPod, five years late 2006–2015 iPod 1,000 songs in your pocket 2001–2022 Google Glass The face computer the public rejected 2013–2023 Pebble The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried 2013–2018 Apple Newton The handheld that was right, ten years early 1993–1998 HP TouchPad Killed 49 days after launch 2011–2011

Sources [edit]

  1. Microsoft Puts One Last Bullet In The Kin, Shuts Down Kin Studio TechCrunch 1 February 2011 [archived]
  2. Flashback: Kin, Android's homely cousin, dies twice GSMArena 15 November 2020 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).