I have read it in Engadget, also in Ars Technica. The problem with the Kin is that, as you say, it was viewed by Microsoft as a clause completion for purchasing Danger; instead of trying to develop its full potential. In fact; you can say that a fully developed Kin was a huge menace to WP7.

So they did a half-hearted job in developing it, Danger people has already left Microsoft; and the long time to develop it from zero prompted Verizon to price it as a smartphone. That was the problem. If the Kin had been offered for $0 with a $10 month plan with unlimited SMS, it wouldn't be dead today.

To offer a mobile device that, for whatever reasons, ended up as featurephone; priced as a smartphone (thus entering the bloodbath that the smartphone market is now), that was suicide.

He writes something that I find sad to read:

"Now you have to put on a show and you have to brag about your greatness, else you will lose. Its no longer a 'lets build it together' world of cooperation, it is now a dog-eat-dog world of zero-sum: 'for me to win, you have to lose'. That is the game Apple brought to town."

Here is hoping that Android or Qt helps bridge some of the market segmentation that we have due to the zero-sum perspective that reigns in the market now.