Microsoft Kin canceled already: whatever it was, it didn’t last long

Whatever the Microsoft Kin was, it didn’t last long. The new phone, which Microsoft sent to market seemingly just days ago, has already been end of life’d as a separate product and instead folded into Microsoft’s Windows 7 phone team, which has been a long-running failure itself. The bizarre part is that the end of the Kin has come even as its initial run of television advertisements introducing the product to the public is still airing. And that’s before one considers the name “Kin” itself which was a beyond bizarre choice when one considers the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle.

When the Kin was first introduced, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber prophetically wrote “Microsoft Announces Kin, Its Next Two Failed Phones” – yet one has to wonder if even he expected it to disappear this quickly.