Windows Phone Thoughts: KIN Total Cost Nears One Billion Dollars

So just how much did the whole Danger acquistion and KIN project cost Microsoft? It looks like the total cost is approaching $1,000,000,000. Ouch. Engadged discovered there was a $240 million writeoff in Microsoft's June 30, 2010 financial statements and notes that it paid $500 million for Danger. What is not included in any of these numbers are:

• Routine operation expenses Microsoft incurred for the unit since the Danger acquistion.
• Hardware upgrades and purchases for the Sidekick infrastructure
• Revenues from the Sidekick business (that would offset any costs)
• Expenses, penalties and fees incurred when the Danger servers went belly up and ate all of the Sidekick data and Microsoft had to go in and fix it
• Marketing costs for the KIN

All told, I suspect the venture wound up costing Microsoft over a billion dollars above any revenue it got from the Sidekick business. A billion dollars is a lot of money, but in the world of acquisitions, I suspect more money was blown when HP acquired Compaq or AOL acquired Time Warner.