To get anywhere, a project inside Microsoft needs an executive sponsor, and for Pink, Allard had been that guy from day one. It was his baby. Of course, Allard was a visionary, an idea man; Lees — like most Microsoft execs — is a no-nonsense numbers guy, and to put it bluntly, he didn’t like that Pink existed. To quote our sources, Lees was “jealous,” and he was likely concerned that Kin was pulling mindshare (and presumably resources) from Windows Mobile’s roadmap. With enough pressure, Lees ended up getting his way; Pink fell under his charge and Allard was forced into the background.
Having Lees in control changed everything, if for no other reason than he didn’t care about the project at all. This was right around the time that Windows Phone 7 was rebooting, and Pink didn’t fit in his game plan; to him, it was little more than a contractual obligation to Verizon, a delivery deadline that needed to be met.
The Kin was a flawed concept from the start. With a severe lack of features that consumers expect to see on a device that sold as much as a regular smartphone and required a smartphone-like data plan, almost everyone — from reviewers to the teenage market that was supposed to buy them in droves — brushed the Kin off as a failed product,
In a company as bureaucratic as Microsoft, it’s not surprising such a shoddy device could be brought to market. Apple may be stretched thin sometimes, but they’d never have such a misguided, hobbled product on the market, let alone pull the plug on it two months later.