After being on the market a short six weeks, Microsoft announced that it was scrapping the launch of KIN devices in European markets, and with it, further development of the platform stateside. While the premature death of the platform isn’t really a shock (the phones had glaring issues and ran an OS that clearly had no roadmap in a Windows Phone 7 dominated future), the KIN included a notable number of features Microsoft and its Danger team executed better than anyone else in the smartphone market today.
Even though they're devices you'll probably never encounter in person, as just under 10,000 were sold (as of this writing, there are 9,341 active KIN devices using the platform's Facebook application), they're a glimpse into the future of a relatively fresh mobile device paradigm. One where the cloud rules entirely, where devices are little more than gateways into all of that data already on the web. Google and Apple are slowly moving towards that vision, but Microsoft has nearly all the pieces ready today. If Microsoft wants to dominate the smartphone market with Windows Phone 7, rolling KIN's cloud centric functionality into the platform will be key to success.
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