Microsoft insists on releasing dumb phone without apps? We were thinking and thinking and the only explanation is: extreme incompetence.
Edward from MSMobiles.recently posted about a survey showing teens want iPhones and extrapolated that this means they won’t want the app-less Kin devices. As I posted earlier, my teenage daughter was gushing over the Kin One as I was watching some videos on it yesterday – the phone is cool and focuses on the features that are important to her (taking pictures of herself and putting them up on facebook mainly).
The whole world is app-happy these days, but I really like Microsoft’s push away from the app and towards the experience-centric model that we see in Windows Phone 7. I may sound like an Apple fanboy here, but do we really care which app we’re using to do all the basic functions we expect from a smartphone? When I take a picture on the skihill, do I want to fiddle around with different apps to get that pic to my Facebook account, up to Twitter, then to MMS it to my brother to rub it in? No – I want to click a button and have it done quickly and easily… just like my kid wants.
I do want to be able to install new apps to extend the functionality of my device, but I does my teenage daughter? Not really. I watch her data usage on her BlackBerry like a hawk, and she only uses a few megs/month – all Facebook and social network updates. These new Kin devices are targeted at her and her contemporaries… and I think Microsoft has aimed just right.
Are you really this dumb? Kin phones are aimed at teens. Teens can get their phones with two sources of income. If they have jobs and save their money, they can get whatever phone they want and perhaps spend more money to get apps-supported phones like Windows Phone 7 or the iPhone. If the phone is purchased via their parents, this is the perfect phone. Now you can say, well, the puclib still wants apps. Well that’s nice and all, but if a parent is supplying their teen with an endless flow of money for apps or even a considerate amount for add-ons to their mobile phone, they should be beaten as soon as possible. Parents like that are producing naive knowitall kids that feel their entitled to everything on the planet. Microsoft is actually doing the world a favor on this one.
To compete with the pizza shop across the street, you don’t open another pizza shop.
Hi Rorison,
It sounds like you’re both for my point and against it.
To pick up on your last little pizza metaphor, however,
a) when I take a lady to a nice Italian restaurant, like adults do, i send my kid to the pizza shop across the street, where all she can get is pizza and she can’t spend more than $10.
And, while I don’t see where you’re going with it, b) yes, you do open that second pizza shop, if you think you have a better product – its called “competition” and its one of the basic tenets of our economic system.