One of the biggest losers in the Kin debacle that hasn’t been talked about is Sharp. OEM for the Kin, and the biggest cellphone brand[s] in Japan….but not in the states of course. Kin was supposed to be their entry point into the US market for mobile. Sharp ponied up half the ad $$ for the Kin launch…basically subsidised it with the thought it would be good for their brand and they would sell a lot of phones and be a trojan horse for other Sharp Mobile efforts in the US. Big fail. Not only did they have to tool up factories custom design hardware and sub the marketing they only sold a few thousand phones at best. Sharp’s taking a huge bath on this one. And because Sharp’s mobile group is in Nara Japan and had no people on the ground in WA or Palo Alto…they had little leverage or insight into the US market and got taken for a ride. I’m sure there are a lot of unhappy execs in Osaka right now cause of this…
via Mini-Microsoft: The KIN-fusing KIN-clusion to KIN, and FY11 Microsoft Layoff Rumors.
That link leads to over 600 comments from Microsoft employees regarding the Kin fiasco. Eye watering.