To say we were unimpressed with the first leaked shots to come out of Microsofts “Project Pink” would be a bit of an understatement. This was Microsoft’s first in-house foray into the mobile hardware space, and we’d been hearing tales of it for years; yet in the end, what we were seeing was bad enough that we equated the two leaked devices to “a midgie Pre and a Touch Pro crossed with a jellybean”.
And now, it all begins to make sense. We were recently contacted by a source with a seemingly exhaustive knowledge of Microsoft’s Project Pink, and what they’ve shared with us doesn’t sound good. If what they’ve shared is true, it seems that the project as a whole began — and will likely end — in vain.
For the sake of proper disclosure, a bit on our source: they have maintained absolute anonymity. While they were careful to hold back any potentially identifiable details, they exhibited a very well defined knowledge of the project. We have since verified enough of the details with independent sources to believe what they’ve shared to be true.
Here’s what we have been told:
- Much of the Danger/Sidekick team has left or been fired since the 2008 acquisition. According to our source, there is “no braintrust that understands how to build a product” left on the Pink team.
- If a product does ship, it will lack the third party application support/store that rumors have indicated it would have – the remaining team members simply don’t know how to get it done.
- Amongst remaining employees, dissent is high. Much of the team uses iPhones around the office, or their old Sidekick handsets. Employees “hate the product” internally, many feeling that the division exists only to “challenge [the Windows Mobile 7 team] and upset them into competing.” Our source outright indicated that they felt the product was never intended to ship.
- At this point, the project is roughly 2 years behind schedule. In order to continue moving forward toward some undefined launch date, basics such as a calendar application have already ended up on the cutting room floor.
- On the “Turtle” (the smaller of the two devices): The touchscreen is unusable, as there are too many elements on screen at one time. “Your finger covers 50% of the screen”, says the source. The unit was designed “on the fly”, with a design drawn up and then sent to Sharp for verbatim manufacturing. Our source says this backwards design process has lead to a “near disastrous” battery life. “Designers forced Sharp to build to sketch and not ‘worry about that stuff.’”
- The UI concept work was originally done by an outside party, and Microsoft engineers have been “struggling to replicate it ever since”.
Signing off, our source says that the project “is near death and probably will be canceled.”
If what our source has shared with us is true, this is all rather depressing. Not because it means the Pink phones might not ship, mind you — as mentioned, we weren’t all that keen on the project to begin with — but because of what it means for the Sidekick line of phones. Danger took a massive hit when it lost some of it’s greatest minds to competing companies (CEO Andy Rubin took off to lead Android at Google, while Lead UI designer Matias Duarte is a big player behind Palm’s WebOS), but we’d always kept a special place in our hearts for the ol’ Kick. Our hopes of one more great Sidekick — possibly one rockin’ Android, or any other smartphone OS — were dashed when Microsoft snatched up the company last year. Now, it seems impossible.
What a waste of a perfectly good project codename.
thats funny shiz
Apple had an operating system project by that name in the 90’s. It, too, failed.
what they need is a mrpink, surely there is a sub 40 CEO out there a hired gun who could swoop in and re-invent this project and make it a go.. we do need more hand held alternatives and MS was expected to bring a product to market…
time to clean house and either re-boot project pink or re-name it all together.
Steve Buscemi can fix anything.
That is what you meant, right?
=)
LMAO, Steve Buscemi can fix anything…
Talking about Microshi.. aeehm Microsoft’s incapability… they are dead in the water anyway, especially after the recent hotmail leak..
… and gmail leak and yahoo leak? :)
Or it could just a whiny little bitch who got a bad appraisal venting.
Who knows?
I call BS on this one,from what I understand the Two phones pictured are essentially Dumb phones and early prototypes at that.
They were for the danger line and have nothing to with project pink.
This is nothing but Fud..
Sounds as if they purchased the company to kill competition. Surely not even Microsoft could fuck up the successful work Sidekick produced.
And just five days later, they did…
Robert wrote:
“Sounds as if they purchased the company to kill competition. Surely not even Microsoft could fuck up the successful work Sidekick produced.”
Ah, the irony.
Robert – October 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm CDT Sounds as if they purchased the company to kill competition. Surely not even Microsoft could fuck up the successful work Sidekick produced.
Robert
Oh yeah, they sent 500 million just to Kill a company that really didn’t pose a threat.
As I posted earlier,these are early prototype Dumb phones with some kind of Zune function, and a qwerty keyboard..nothing more.
This is not Project pink.
500 million was nothing to Microsoft 1.5 years ago. It’s chump change and possible IP grab
Yep, don’t care. Pink is pretty lame. It brings absolutely nothing new to the market what-so-ever. It deserves to be taken out back and shot.
Microsoft is too damn old and stupid to realize that the ONLY phone they need is a Zune phone. Specifically, since apparently the company isn’t very intelligent so I best say this now, the Zune HD. Fuck everything else, fuck it all. Nobody gives a shit. NOBODY. Not even your regular people. But a Zune HD phone, now that is HUGE. That could very well and easily destroy all iPhone competition. The iPhone itself.. maybe not. But being second runner up by a mile and a half is a pretty damn nice seat to be sitting in.
Get. A. Fucking. Clue. Microsoft. Don’t be Sony or 99% of all the other companies out there, actually listen to people. Why not? I mean really, WHY NOT? I like the iPhone, but its time for something new and it needs to be the Zune HD phone.
“…but its time for something new and it needs to be the Zune HD phone.”
Okay, but how does the Zune HD translate into being new? It offers no ground-breaking UI paradigms, pretty much the same specs as the Touch, some worse (screen size), and some better (video out via cable).
A Zune phone “might” take on Android and Palm, but for the near future Apple and RIM are busy fighting for the #1 and #2 spots. A me-too Zune product could still only place a distant third.
“It brings absolutely nothing new to the market what-so-ever.”
We know nothing about these phones what so ever. You’re delusional.
ummmm, the Zune is garbage, always has been , since way back when the first poop colored brick came out, to now, with the failed iPod touch copy.
Highly doubtful that a Zune Phone would be any good.
Well, I trully believe this is just misleading so Microsoft will patch some info leaks.
I believe they will go ahead with this project….
Will see…
Well, I truly believe this is just misleading so Microsoft will patch some info leaks.
I believe they will go ahead with this project….
Will see
Andy
I agree, They haven’t stopped anything.
1. Those leaked prototypes aren’t bad. They won’t compete with iPhone necessarily, but they will certainly appeal to tweens in their simplicity… provided they have what they want when they are released. Stop bitching about their designs. Get something else if minimal isn’t your flavor. Geez, suddenly everyone’s opinion of aesthetics is the only one worthwhile.
2. There will be fruits of labor.
3. What does “dead” really mean?
4. FUD index will increase 10 fold over the next 12 months. Expect it.
I don’t know, if the Pink was dead, why they try to find some ad agencies ? http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2519
This is a planned leak.
This is also from well informed folks. I think they will spend 200mill for ad campaign.
And yes, we heard that the moral in the team is really low. The main problem is performance of phone.
Team does not have time to make a refined UI.
And we heard from indirect sources that the remaining founders (Joi and Mathai???) are very unhappy. Just waiting for their 12 mill end of May10.
So let me understand there is a rumour that another rumour is not true?! I have a source that says that unless something is official it isn’t something.
sheesh.
Glad this has happened. Microsoft does not need another team working on a phone. They need to focus on WM7. What they have right now is nowhere near competitive with Pre and iPhone.
There is no way out till WM goes out of CE core. I hope folks know that CE is the core OS and WM is the phone part on top of CE.
The WM7 is still CE based. Fortunately it is the last one. Then WM8 is NT based (whatever that means).
This info is from OEMs who were shown a roadmap recently. They hate it. They will have to wait beyond 2011 for WM8 while others advance.
Microsoft still thinks that they will win usual game of coming late/second and then lasting others till they win.
I think we should give Microsoft a chance. Who knows maybe they will surprise us all with really cool new phone idea. Anything can happen.
The question is- Are these two phones likable?
I found this from another site.
Cut&Paste from another site——–
(BTW-I am suspecting that the time shown below is some other timeZone).
“These recent rumors and the Turtle and Pure photos are the final design pictures. The actual phones look ugly and not impressive.
Pink is NOT WM7 projects. It is CE6 and a branch off WM7 after a big debacle 5-6 months ago.
It has a full back end (service) applications behind it (like a cloud).
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/06/2009 – 10:29.
“
“Clever” Googling (”site:linkedin.com/in/ Danger-inc” etc.) suggests the top danger talent included: { Andy Rubin, Brian Swetland, Chris DeSalvo, Dan Bornstein } => Android => Google; { Jeff Bush, Mattias Duarte } => Palm (Apple?); { Tony Myles } => VUDU => Ridiculous; Steve Hales => Apple => TribalBrands
Microsoft seems to have retained founders Britt and Hershenson; it’s hard to find anyone else who seems significant.
If you can reach many of these people through your social networks, you’ll find that: MSFT had an entrenched Pink team who shut danger personnel out of contributing, the remaining ones quit (except of course for those desperate to remain employed, who aren’t the good ones); MSFT doesn’t use their for-sale products internally, they use ten-or-twenty-year-old branches of their products that have added feature not in the public product so they can’t switch AND they don’t invest in maintaining them. Their source control, their build system, and their builds are broken and obscenely slow. So it is unpleasant to move from out-of-microsoft to in. Even internally, MSFT substitutes P.R. & Marketing for fixing problems.
Danger integration was ordered at high level but not supported by mid-level managers (Roz Ho, etc.) and failed.
Danger services have been down for a week because MSFT out-sourced support to asia and those guys didn’t make backups before doing hardware maintenance.
Other speculation is that the entire half-bill purchase was to acquire patents Android is already in violation of.
Most telling is that in the middle of recession (one year anniversary) several senior engineers quit without having other jobs lined up.
Majority opinion is that original comments are bitter and just over half accurate, and pictures are long obsolete.
These comments are very bitter.
Who are the carriers for these phones?
I wonder what they must be thinking. These pink phones are looking bad as compared to the new Android phones we are getting this Winter and next summer.
I like MSFT recent products but the sentiment here at least is bad about the pink project.
I’d agree with your list of key Danger folks.
But almost all of those had left before time MS did the acquisition — years of shitty management & no vision beyond more feature creep on Matias’s original design.
Baffled me at the time what MS was paying $500 million for, and I guess we now know the answer.
That is right. The proxies for IM are patented by Danger. Microsoft paid big for those proxie patents for 3 reasons:
-Prevent Apple and Google from having a good IM client
-Sue Google for infringement of said patents(because Danger didn’t have the nuts to)
-Maybe, just maybe launch a phone to support their intent to use the patent
BTW,
what happened to old CEO?
Coupa Cafe sez:
Microsoft apparently retained literally zero Danger talent. Last night’s meeting must have been vicious, because at MIDNIGHT they called around and got three ex-dangerites (CJ, DJ, & MJ) to come in (from Netflix). They had no one in house who understood “device or service”. They laid off service team and offshored to Ukrane. Strangely, all three guys came in and worked all night and fixed something important.
Apparently OPS kept ZERO backups and upgraded SAN wiping ALL DATA. Last night’s heroics only restores SOME data.
Don’t know if those three are the real brains or just the only guys not working for a competing phone developer. “Device” people mostly went to Android or Palm, “Service” people to Netflix.
Laying off the service people makes me think they didn’t want the service features (patents) either. Claim is MSFT *management* wanted Danger to rescue Pink, but Pink team resented interference.
If the service wiped the data, then the only place the data is stored(and not all of it) is on the sidekick hardware. If you lose your kick,run out of battery, hard reset or pull battery to get at an SD card or something all the data is lost.
Now, I thought it was supposed to be the other way around!
Khan-
you predicted the future. Kudos, of some sort.
Read the latest on this saga at RDM:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/09/exclusive-pink-danger-leaks-from-microsofts-windows-phone/
Quite incredible. Microsoft is becoming a shambles.
One wonders how far away the meltdown is…
Unfortunately, EVERYTHING in the above post IS TRUE.
@Michael you need to write a follow on post on this. It is a BIG news.
I still hold a soft corner for MSFT. It gave so much to software industry early on.
There is substantial lack of business ethics inside MSFT as well as complete lack of business understanding now.
I did some research on Linkedin. There are significant folks who left PME project recently. Some of them joined Netflix, Apple and Google.
Value the emp while they are there. There is a reason why folks from Danger left in last few months. I am sure the leak came from some of these. I am told that the veterans in the PME team treated the Danger folks with less than 0 value. That is the reason they left.
I hope there is a realization in MSFT old guards to accept new folks and respect them.
The best part of the link above is that Microscam has been ripping TMobile off since the acquisition. Essentially pretending to maintain the service and software upgrades with some offshore hackers in the Ukraine. The cost cutting measure is probably costing Ho Ho 200 times more. I bet TMobile files a lawsuit for fraud. Imagine, Ho Ho could upset that many players in the industry and still fail
I heard that J Allard is cranking up a new mobile team. They hope to get it right this time.
Why should Microsoft even be in the hardware business? They have no expertise in making devices. Half of their Xbox units had to be warranty repaired.
Microsoft bet the company on Windows Eveywhere but it has certainly not happened that way. XP is incompatible with Vista and 7 and Mobile 6.5 and Mobile 7 and now Mobile 8 is being talked about as “NT-based” that is going to happen a full 10 years after Apple as usual. Apple is running OS X in the iPod for years now for crying out loud.
Microsoft’s unique horizontal integration just cannot move fast enough for today’s world. By the time their hardware partners and their various divisions all get onto the same page, the era has passed. They are so monopoly fat that they can’t outcompete themselves from 2001 that is why XP still rules the Windows platform.
Meanwhile, Microsoft are not making iPhone apps, they’re not making Blackberry apps, just to spite those manufacturers. They should have invented Google Wave years ago for office users instead of 8 years of trying to replace XP and nothing to show for it.
Why am I not surprised. This is just another example of why Microsoft should just stick to computers, everything else just sucks,and their computers aren’t much better.
Microsoft doesn’t need to dominate every market. They are happy placing on the racetrack-not winning. MSFT is a numbers house, not an innovation shop, so expect them to copy innovators to collect some marketshare. The company has no pride in excellence and they have to make money selling the same crap over and over again. When they break into other markets, they basically act like Starbucks. Look for a local operator that is successful and steal their business. MSFT just steals ideas and delivers a bad product to people who are conditioned to suffer and don’t know any better. The place is overrun by thin-skinned Project Managers and political hacks that would make the RNC proud.