
Actually KIN Sold More Than 503 Devices - AndrewWarner
http://pocketnow.com/rumor/actually-kin-sold-more-than-503-devices
======
byoung2
_KIN registers its Facebook app on Facebook, where anybody can actually see
the total number of monthly active users of the application. The KIN Facebook
app is only available on KIN devices and can only be used by people who have
KIN devices. So how many people are actually using KIN devices that are
connected to Facebook? 8,810 as of right now._

There are about 2000 Verizon stores
([http://www.vzwcareers.com/Why/Test.aspx?lid=//careers//why+v...](http://www.vzwcareers.com/Why/Test.aspx?lid=//careers//why+verizon+wireless)),
and I bet each one had an activated KIN on display. So that brings the number
down to 6810. Subtract from that people who returned their phones within the
30 day window (I don't think the return deactivates the Facebook app).

But even if the real number were 8800, or even 88,000, that's nowhere near the
1 million+ Apple did on the first day for iPhone 4, or even the 500,000
estimated HTC EVOs sold.

~~~
miin
503 over the weekend is what he said - not 503 in total. MS probably needed to
sell that many every hour to pay for that marketing campaign alone.

~~~
nooneelse
That is a misinterpretation of the sentence on your part... "a well-placed
little birdie told me over the weekend that they sold a grand total of 503
Kins before they pulled the plug".

The "over the weekend" phrase is marking when he was told, not when the sales
took place. This interpretation is further supported by the "that" which
immediately follows it, so as to separate the part of the sentence about the
act of telling from the part of the sentence about that which was told. And
further supported still by the use of the term "grand total" in the phrasing
"grand total of #X before time_Y".

That pedantic enough to prove the point?

Accounting for registrations by unsold units is a more likely source for the
difference in numbers.

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ShabbyDoo
The actual number of units sold isn't nearly as important as how quickly
Microsoft decided to cancel the product. Imagine that you are a really rich
guy who bought up 100% of Microsoft shares six months ago with the goal of
maximizing NPV over a long time horizon. You have a carrier agreement to
launch a Microsoft branded phone, but you're pretty sure that the phone you've
developed sucks. You have to worry about your relationship with your carrier
and customer perception. Two choices are obvious. You can negotiate with the
carrier to cancel the agreement. Some sort of exclusive on Windows 7 Phone
Edition might sweeten the deal. Consumers will never really know that you'd
promised a phone. Or, you can invest in remediation steps to make the phone
not suck so badly to save your brand's reputation (or what's left of it).

What Microsoft did makes no sense. Now, I can't trust that Microsoft will
support their products for longer than it takes them to get their first screen
scratches. And, how could a carrier consider entering into future agreements
with Microsoft when this one led to so much public embarrassment? That such a
decision was made suggests significant internal managerial distress (to be
euphemistic).

------
raganwald
8,810 is far, far more than 503. Many folks are saying that it is still far
too low a number for the difference to matter. Bollocks! As long as we're
trading rumours, an anonymous Microsoftie complained that the entire cost for
Kin (including the Danger acquisition, R&D, marketing, and so forth) was a
billion dollars.

$1,000,000,000 divided by 503 units is $1,988,071.57 per unit. Call it two
million dollars.

$1,000,000,000 divided by 8,810 units is a mere $113,507.38. Call it a hundred
grand.

From where I'm standing, losing two million dollars per unit is a lot more
than losing a hundred grand per unit. Let's give Microsoft some credit for
keeping losses at such a manageable level. Who knows, when the final numbers
come out they might have managed to lose even less, maybe as little as fifty
grand per unit!

~~~
zweben
How is losses per unit sold relevant to anything? Overall profits or losses
are what matter. I don't know how much Microsoft made off each one, so I'll be
generous and guess $400 average revenue after subsidy payments.

1,000,000,000 - ($400 x 503) = $999,798,800 lost

1,000,000,000 - ($400 x 8810) = $996,476,000 lost

The difference is negligible.

~~~
panacea
I'm pretty sure he was joking.

------
roadnottaken
The DF article said they sold 503 devices "before they pulled the plug." I'm
sure MS didn't go around getting all the un-sold devices back from vendors --
they continued selling their stock. It's just that 503 devices were sold when
MS _decided_ to kill the program.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yes. Unless this is going to be one of those "Atari 2600 E.T. cartridge"
situations -- where you find a reason to dig a giant hole in the desert and
bury all your warehoused stock -- every Kin that was manufactured is going to
end up being turned on somewhere, somehow, at some price. And surely they
manufactured far more than a few thousand.

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commieneko
I've no idea how many units Microsoft actually sold, but just wanted to point
out the active accounts does not equal units sold. There are probably several
thousand units activated for development, testing, marketing, and point of
sales demonstration.

~~~
eli
And I'm sure there are also people who bought the phone and never set up
Facebook

~~~
protomyth
What use would a phone the seemed dedicated to Facebook be without setting up
Facebook?

~~~
eli
Before they canned it, I think it got pretty close to free with a new
contract. It may well have been the best phone there in that price range.

------
TallGuyShort
I've seen Microsoft brag about how popular Silverlight is because of the
number of downloads. I myself have downloaded the installer at least 10 times
on various machines trying to get some demos working, and I've always had
problems during installation. I wonder how many "users" Microsoft thinks I am,
since I currently don't have a single working installation.

edit: In case it isn't clear, my point is that there's a lot of ways that
number can be inaccurate and bloated. How many prototypes and test devices are
there? How many demos?

~~~
markkanof
A valid point about how they count Silverlight users, but this case is
different because you won't have a single user "downloading" multiple
instances of the phone hardware.

------
ulvund
* how many of those 8800 copies were sold

* how many were given away for free

* what was the time of the '503 sales'-report :)

------
alanh
Comment by Jeff Enderwick, on page: "8810 is just a different flavor of zero."

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thought_alarm
Kin sales amount to a rounding error, any way you want to look at it.

~~~
PostOnce
Except we're talking about rounding billions and not rounding change.

X,600,000,000.00 rather than 6,600,000,000.X0

Big difference :P

~~~
PostOnce
Really, downvoters, 20+% of your quarterly net profit is a "rounding error"?
That's financial genius.

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st3fan
Funny how a number can be 20x higher but still very low ...

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adolph
503, 8,810, this is all proof of Prince's point: "all these computers and
digital gadgets . . . just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good
for you."

Whatever is going to happen to KIN's real person, Rosa?

They are already disappearing her from Hulu:
<http://www.hulu.com/watch/148231/rosas-journey-intro>

------
JabavuAdams
Someone pointed out in a previous thread that HTTP status code 503 is "service
unavailable". I think the 503 number is just a prank, and apparently a very
successful one.

------
chaostheory
I wonder how many MS employees/friends/family the 8800 registrations account
for?

~~~
rbanffy
8297, probably.

~~~
hga
Nah, they're all using iPhones.

(Seriously, that's what's been reported for MS employees including many/most?
on the Kin team.)

~~~
Locke1689
I'm using an iPhone. Not on the Kin team, though. Android phones are pretty
common too, along with some RIMs. I'd say it probably looks like a typical
gathering of techies. There are even some Windows 7s floating around ;)

------
sailormoon
The daring fireball article did say "sold". Other comments here have indicated
that Verizon were giving the units away just to get rid of them. Maybe they
didn't pay MS for those. Who knows what was in their contract. Maybe MS
decided to scrap the deal 2 months ago and told Verizon to dump its stock.
Until Microsoft releases its Official Kin Sales Report, it's all just
speculation.

I am inclined to believe Gruber. If he stakes his reputation (very important
to his massively inflated ego) on a specific number, it means he's satisfied
it's correct, and that's a pretty strong vote in my book. Could be wrong of
course but in the absence of hard evidence I go by gut & human nature...

~~~
rauljara
I have no problem believing Gruber believes it. And I have no problem
believing whoever told Gruber believes it. And no offense to your gut... but
there are just too many ways for numbers like these to be messed up. Maybe it
was 503 on opening day. Maybe it was 503 for the state of California. Maybe
someone at MS who wanted to politically annihilate the kin team and leaked
some false numbers to someone honest who took them at face value. But 503
never seemed remotely plausible to my gut. As others have said, it seems like
MS employees would have bought more than that. 8,000 kins on facebook - ~2,000
display models still seems like an embarrassingly small number, but at least
it exists in the realms of plausibility.

~~~
megablast
This can easily be solved with MS coming out with there own number. Or
verizon.

And I am pretty sure if someone told me that they had sold 503 phones, I would
have asked some more questions.

"They only sold 503 phones on the weekend" "What, for the enture country" "Oh
no, just at this one store in Arizona, and they were only open for 1 hour, and
they ran out of stock". "Oh, not so bad then"

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GrandMasterBirt
Damn, ok so basically we just silenced the 503 rumor and replaced it with 8800
copies. That is an even bigger flop because now its not a rumor. Unless they
sold over 100,000 items they are fucked.

~~~
glhaynes
They've cancelled the product, so they're fucked regardless.

------
gcb
500 users 8300 test emulators with test accounts

------
binaryfinery
"The KIN Facebook app is only available on KIN devices and can only be used by
people who have KIN devices."

Or by the people who wrote it. Microsoft.

