Kin Studio: The Only Compelling Thing About The Kin Is Being Discontinued

Those of you who bought a Kin (all 500 of you) probably liked the Kin Studio. It was likely one of the biggest reasons you bought the phone in the first place, having social networks and life-streaming apps from the cloud in your hands. As of January 31, 2011, the Kin Studio will be no more. Those who have a Kin will be given the option of getting a new phone for free. The phone will continue to work, as will Zune, text messaging, web, and other basic functionality, but the studio itself will be closed. According to WP Central, owners of the Kin will lose:

• Feed Reader will stop working
• Search Near me will stop working
• Posting Photos to social sites will no longer be possible
• Most pictures currently on Kin will only appear at thumbnail resolution
• Posting to Social Networks will no longer work.
• No comments from the loop
• Social network contacts will disappear.
• Loop will stop to work
• Kin Spot will only send to emails.
• Social networks only accessed from web browser.

Everyone (other than Apple) stumbles a bit when they launch their first phone. It seems that the concept is a lot easier to grasp than the execution is to initiate. Still, does this mean anything about the success or failure of the Windows Phone 7 or future (if any) phones from Microsoft?