Can Microsoft sell hardware?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: No. Judging by their long history and most recent failure.


Microsoft hardware market failures:

1. MSN TV
2. Zune (all)
3. KIN
4. XBox (original)

XBox 360 is Microsoft's only hardware success, if the $1B RRoD fiasco can be considered a success, aside from the Microsoft branded keyboards and mouses it also sells.

KIN could have been saved:
What Microsoft should have done was release the KIN as a Zune HD Phone, that runs Zune HD apps - all 4 of them - and with a featurephone data plan.

Microsoft's ADD:
Microsoft's lack of focus is something I always wanted to discuss. If you look at their handset OSes/Devices: Zune HD, the now dead KIN, Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Phone 7; none of them run the same apps - the KIN doesn't run 3d party apps at all- the same OS or the same development platform. Sure they all run on a very similar kernel based off Windows CE, but what matters to developers and users is different enough to make them incompatible. The question is not why but who? who is the idiot in charge of all this? Why can't Microsoft execute the ideas they put forth and why so much wasted effort? Ballmer needs to be nailed to a wooden cross and set on fire!