Microsoft Kin Smartphone
Microsoft hopes to take on the growing importance of bitter rivals Apple and Google in the mobile phone market with a new range of its own mobile devices that focus on social networking.
Its new “Kin” range of mobile phones have slide-out qwerty keyboards.
Microsoft has been in the mobile phone market for almost a decade but has consistently failed to grab anything like the market share it has enjoyed in the PC world. Its share of the US smartphone market dropped to 15.1% in February from 19.1% in November, while Google’s Android platform has 9%, up from 3.8%, and Apple maintained its quarter share of the market, according to figures from Comscore.
Earlier this year Google launched its own phone, the Nexus One. It is manufactured by HTC but Google has controlled exactly how the device looks and works.
In a similar manner, the Kin devices are manufactured by Sharp but Microsoft has control over the software, online services and hardware. The phones are designed to make it easy for users to access Microsoft’s online services – including search engine Bing – as well as publish and share information with their contacts.
In the US the devices will be available on Verizon Wireless while in Europe, Vodafone will launch them in the autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, with further markets to follow before the end of 2010.
Mobile social networking is increasingly having strong appeal for our customers. KIN has a unique and intuitive way of engaging with the user, enabling them easily to share experiences and stay in touch with their friends.
Pricing information and local availability dates will be announced by the markets closer to the launch date.
Of the two devices the Kin One is the smaller and has a 5 megapixel camera – the same as the Nexus One and better than the camera in the iPhone. The larger Kin Two has an 8 mega-pixel camera and can take high definition video.
