Both Engadget and Gizmodo have just posted that Microsoft will be pulling the KIN from the shelves effective immediately and that the team behind the now dead project will be moved over to the Windows Phone 7 team. Gee talk about taking the Web’s fail fast philosophy to heart.

Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo suggests that rather being a fault of Microsoft the real failure of the KIN can be attributed to Verizon’s predatory pricing of the data plan for the KIN which saw it being treated as a smartphone – it wasn’t. This is something that I have said from day one when the KIN was announced and said again when we got word of the KIN going on sale.

When Microsoft first launched the KIN and we got word of what the prices were going to be I said at the time that Verizon had just killed the KIN before it even had a chance. It wasn’t so much the prices for the social phone itself, which really was fairly decent, but rather the extreme short-sightedness of the price Verizon wanted for their data plan to go with it.

As much as this might suck and prompt more Microsoft jokes that are really ill-deserved this move might be the smartest one that the company can make. While I understood the thinking behind the reason for the KIN it also didn’t make sense to have two different phone platforms, especially when Microsoft really needs to concentrate on the Windows Phone 7.

This is the official statement from Microsoft on the matter

“We have made the decision to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7 and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones.”


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