It;s official: Microsoft;s Pink undertaking is no longer a mystery (as well as a partial mystery). The details are out, plus the title of the phones,
Office Professional Plus 2010 Key, targeted at the teen/twenty-something marketplace, is Kin.There have been lots of rumors. But now the specs and actual pictures are right here. There;s a Kin 1 and a Kin Two (”Turtle” and “Pure”). Sharp, Verizon and Vodafone are, indeed, the partners. Verizon is going to start offering the first Kins with the U.S. in May and via Vodafone in Germany Europe in “the fall.Now that the Kin cat is out with the bag, here are a few things I found surprising about the devices (after reporting for more than two years on every twist and turn about Pink):1. The Kin phones make use with the “same core elements as Windows Phone 7.” The Kin isn;t a dumbed-down Windows Phone (as we;d been hearing it might be). Kin phones have Exchange connectivity,
Office Professional 2010 Key, Zune music/video capabilities and dedicated Bing search buttons, just like Windows Phone 7 phones will. The Kin phones will be the “first Windows Phones that ship with Zune,” said Kin team members in the launch today. (I asked several team members what the operating system is inside and no 1 was willing to say more than it is Windows Compact Edition-based, just like Windows Phone OS 7.0 is; they wouldn;t talk about version numbers or whether the two phone OSes have more in common than just their CE roots.)2. The Kin team spent “thousands of hours” together with the target audience before they wrote a line of code. This information-gathering task was part of what was known as “Venture Muse” (another codename I had heard and wondered about). Microsoft teams like to pride themselves on doing customer outreach and telemetry,
Windows 7, but they interviewed 50,000 (!) people, I was told. Planning started back inside the summer of 2007, a year before Microsoft acquired Danger.3. Speaking of Danger — and also the Sidekick — the Kin doesn;t seem much like a Sidekick at all. Yes, a bunch of the Danger folks defected and/or were let go, post acquisition. But calling the Kin “the next-generation Sidekick” isn;t really accurate. I asked whether there were any elements of the Danger OS inside new phones and was told no.4. There are no apps for the Kin. No app marketplace and nothing other than the Kin service which will connect users to their Facebook, Twitter,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, MySpace and Kin Studio (cloud services collection). At least for now, there are no plans to introduce apps for the Kin devices.5. Microsoft kept the Kin identify a secret until today. I had a chance to ask Roz Ho, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft;s Premium Mobile Service team plus the head with the Pink challenge about the “Kin” name. Like other Microsoft execs, she emphasized the “kinship” connections of Kin. She also said Microsoft considered a lot of names — possibly as many as a thousand — before deciding on Kin. (She wouldn;t share any with the other names; I asked.) It;s kind of amazing kin.com was available and that no 1 figured out until today that Pink = Kin.I;ve got some more interesting tidbits about Kin,
Windows 7 sale, Pink and other related topics from a conversation I had with Ho coming up in my next post. Stay tuned.