Would you have wanted to be the manager whose job it was to persuade Steve Ballmer to keep investing in Kin?
Thought not. The writing has been on the wall for this smart-ish phone for some time. The Microsoft CEO – who took direct personal responsibility for the company’s mobile business six weeks ago, on the early “retirement” of consumer products chief Robbie Bach – has now delivered the coup de grace (the story was broken today by Ina Fried at Cnet, and Microsoft confirmed to us that there will be no future versions of the device).
One message from this: Microsoft’s period of experimentation in consumer gadgets is coming to an end. Mr Ballmer is doubling down instead on the main battle ahead as he looks to buttress the Windows platform against Apple and Google.
Bebo founder Michael Birch thinks that becoming a multimillionaire nearly killed him. Shortly after selling his social networking site to AOL for $850m in 2008, a long-term benign defect became dangerous
