[rospaya]

> Why not have both and see what the market decides?

Kin was killed after six weeks, the market decided it was crap and only a couple were sold. Actually not so much that the Kin itself is bad, but carriers weren't enthusiastic enough, and Microsoft had marketing problems for a product that would battle WP7 6 months later.

[unexpected]

you're right - it was killed after 6 weeks, but if you read the post-mortems/insider "scoops", it seems as if the Sidekick team wasn't allowed to make the product that they wanted to make. Features were getting pulled, changed, and strip-mined.

You illustrate another problem - I don't know why MS would view it as "battling" WP7 6 months later: 1) 6 months is a LIFETIME for a phone. The Pre went from amazing, potential company-saver phone to dud in less than that. 2) At the end of the day, all the money goes back to Microsoft. Why is that a battle? Internally it's a battle for mindshare - but MS needs to realize that they're both on the same team. Apple is happy cannibalizing its iPod sales for iPod Touches/iPhones.

3) If Microsoft wants to grow, several products are going to overlap. There seems to be a convergence towards "the one true device". A year from now, MS is going to start worrying if mobile phone sales are creeping into their netbook sales - they already worry that Office 365 sales are going to creep into Office licensing

[Locke1689]

Since I no longer work there I can say that the insider "scoop" was that main reason it was killed wasn't because Microsoft didn't allow the team to make the right product it was because the carriers interfered too much. The price point was completely wrong for the device that actually came out, but Verizon mandated the price regardless of what the actual target was. By the time everybody had gotten together no one knew what the target market or feature set was.