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Microsoft has cancelled its “Kin� line of teen-oriented phones, after just
two months on the market. There are several analyses of this failure around,
but the Ars one is among the more detailed
<http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise.ars>.

In short: Microsoft spent half a billion buying a company called Danger,
responsible for a hugely popular smartphone called the Sidekick. However,
they didn’t like the fact that the software was built on Java, so they
rewrote it on top of Windows CE. This added an 18-month delay to the product
schedule, ****ing off channel partner Verizon and adding to the cost, to no
consumer-perceivable benefit whatsoever.

Now what’s left of the Kin group has been rolled into the already-overdue
Windows Phone 7 project. Opinion is divided on what this means for the
latter, but I think it’s worth reminding everyone of Brooks’s Law:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.