Microsoft Corp. has unveiled Kin, a new Windows Phone designed for young consumers who are heavy social networkers, and analysts are debating whether this will provide a much-needed boost to the beleaguered operating system.

Launched through partnerships with Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and Sharp Corp., Kin is designed to provide a social experience that blends the phone, online services and the PC with new experiences called the Loop, Spot and Studio. Kin will be exclusively available from Verizon Wireless in the United States beginning in May and from Vodafone this autumn in Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain.

?Over the past year we have made a significant shift in our mobile strategy to focus on the end user,? said Sara Anissipour, spokeswoman at Microsoft, Redmond, WA. ?While Kin and Windows Phone 7 share some of the same underlying technology, each is designed for a distinct audience.

?Both audiences share a willingness to use technology, but differ in their life stage, goals for technology, communications preferences and use of key features like social networking integration,? she said. ?Windows Phone 7 is a multipurpose phone for a broad set of consumers, while Kin is a tailored experience for people that prioritize their social life and personal connections.?

The Kin will run on a unique version of the Windows Phone OS.

Microsoft plans to launch the Windows Phone 7 operating system in time for the holiday season.

Mobile socialologist
Microsoft has launched a socialologist campaign that is meant to create awareness around Kin.

The campaign is a reality-based online program that follows one young woman, Rosa, on a journey to visit people from her online social networks in real life.

?We found Rosa through a nationwide search to find the ideal social networker,? Ms. Anissipour said. ?The campaign is based around the idea that technology?especially online social networks?has redefined what it actually means to be ?friends? with someone.

?Rosa, with her new Kin phone, sets out to meet a variety of those friends and determine the real nature of those relationships,? she said.

Social mobile
With Kin, social networking is built into the fabric of the phone.

Kin has a simple interface that is designed to help people publish status updates, photos and videos.

The hardware design was developed in partnership with Sharp to create a new kind of social phone.

There are two models called Kin One and Kin Two. Both phones feature a touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

Kin One is small and compact enough to fit in a consumers? pocket and can be operated with one hand.

Kin Two has a larger screen and keyboard, in addition to more memory, a higher-resolution camera and the ability to record high-definition video.

The five-and eight-megapixel cameras in One and Two, respectively, are designed for use in low light with image stabilization and a LumiLED flash.

Sharing is caring
The home screen of the phone is called the Kin Loop, which is always up-to-date and always on, showing all the things happening in each consumer's social world.

Kin automatically brings together feeds from Microsoft and third-party services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter all in one place, helping consumers stay connected.

Customers can also select their favorite people, and Kin will automatically prioritize their status updates, messages, feeds and photos.

Another feature is the Kin Spot, a new way for people to share what is going on in their world. It lets users focus first on the people and content they want to share rather than the specific application they want to use, according to Microsoft.

Videos, photos, text messages, Web pages, location and status updates are shared by dragging them to a single place on the phone called the Spot.

Once all the people and content are in the Spot to share, the consumer can choose how to share, and start broadcasting.

Cloud nine
Kin Studio makes the personalized details of consumers? phones available online. Almost everything created on the phone is available in the cloud from any Web browser.

Photos and videos are freed from the confines of the phone and presented in an online visual timeline so they are easy to view and share.

The Kin Studio automatically backs up texts, call history, photos, videos and contacts, and populates a personalized digital journal so consumers can to go back in time to relive various moments.

And the Kin Studio gives customers plenty of storage to keep all those photos, videos, contacts and texts, according to Microsoft.

Zune in
Kin will be the first Windows Phone to feature a Zune experience, including music, video, FM radio and podcast playback.

With a Zune Pass subscription, customers using Zune software on their PC can listen to millions of songs from Zune Marketplace on their Kin while on the go, or load their personal collection.

Kin also has other features, including a browser with the ability to share pieces of the Web, local and Web search by Bing and an RSS feed reader to pull down information on people and stories from the Web.

Next of Kin
While Microsoft did not characterize this release as an extension of its Danger acquisition, claiming the work was underway before the deal, the company did say that access to Danger staff helped in the development of the Kin product.

?Kin One and Kin Two are based on the Windows Phone OS, but it is a fork of the main phone operating system, and it does not appear that they will be able to download Windows Mobile apps, and there will not be an app store on the device,? said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis and consumer technology at the NPD Group, New York.

?For this audience, the main apps they download are apps that provide access to social networks, so an alternative approach is to integrate those functions for this product,? he said.

The target demographic for Kin is dramatically younger than previous Windows Phone handsets.

?Microsoft characterizes this as a group they call ?socialologists,? consumers ages 15-25 with disposable income who obviously are highly active on social networks, living a social networking lifestyle,? Mr. Rubin said. ?In some ways the Kin is an evolution of the feature phone, and a lot of its success will depend on how Verizon structures the data plan for it.

?It is going to be consuming a lot of data, because it sends every photo you take and standard-def video up to the cloud,? he said. ?This demographic, 15-25, is less likely to have a data plan, and there?s an opportunity for Verizon to create a service offering for this product that will entice more consumers in that demographic to sign up for a data plan.?

The NPD Group said that partnering with the No. 1 carrier in the U.S. could boost the Kin?s prospects for success.

?Landing the phone on Verizon will certainly help with marketing the Kin to a large base of customers,? Mr. Rubin said. ?The question is, whether there is enough of a gap between what other handsets can do, for example, the Palm Pixi and other inexpensive smartphones like the Droid Eris, and what the Kin devices can do.

?Some of that will play upon how Verizon structures the data plan,? he said.

Don?t call it a comeback?
Charles Golvin, analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA, wrote in a blog post that he believes Kin will be?finally?a successful foray for Microsoft into the consumer mobile world.

?Kin is the best thing Microsoft has done in the consumer mobile world and represents a well thought out, well implemented product for an attractive audience segment,? Mr. Golvin said.

?The decision to call the Kin devices ?Windows Phones,? however, undermines Microsoft?s story for developers, who will have to deal with three flavors of Windows Phones going forward,? he said.