Which was more disastrous -- Microsoft's Kin or HP's webOS?

Now that HP's more than $1.2 billion bet on webOS has gone down the tubes, it's time to ask the burning question: Which product was more disastrous, HP's ill-fated webOS, or Microsoft's ludicrous Kin?

HP's announcement that it was pulling the plug on webOS comes less than two years after it purchased Palm for an eye-popping $1.2 billion. HP turned Palm software into the centerpiece of its attack on the mobile market with the Touchpad tablet and webOS phones.

HP had big plans for webOS, including plans to license the operating system to other tablet and phone manufacturers. It was at the centerpiece of HP's mobile strategy and beyond. HP planned to install it on desktop and notebook computers in the coming years. In fact, only a few days before it said it was killing the operating system, the Wall Street Journal reported that HP planned to extend the operating system to automomobiles and kitchen appliances.

Consumers shunned it. AllThingsD reported a few days ago, for example, that

Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

The financial consequences are severe. HP will lose out on potentially massive markets; putting an end to webOS means putting an end to the company's plans for expansion into new areas.

It will also cost HP a significant amount of money to shut webOS down. Computerworld notes that closing it down will cost HP between $0.61 and $0.68 per share.

All in all, pretty diastrous given HP's high hopes when it shelled out $1.2 billion for Palm. And it must be doubly disappointing, because the OS and devices based on it garnered solid reviews.

The Kin, by way of contrast, was greeted with only derision during its short life. Its development came via the route of acquisition, when Microsoft purchased a company called Danger, which had developed the groundbreaking Sidekick phone. Microsoft was said to have purchased it for $500 million.

The project was kicked around as a political football inside Microsoft. It started off in Microsoft's Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) division, but then after a power struggle, was shifted to Microsoft's Windows Phone Division. Although it was Java-based, once inside the Windows Phone division, it was forced to run a different operating system. Initially, that was supposed to be Windows Phone 7, but when that was delayed, the older Windows CE was put on it.

The release was a bomb; the device was roundly criticized. In an app-happy world, it ran no apps. It was supposed to be designed for social networking, but its social networking support, notably for Twitter, was dismal. It was as expensive as more powerful phones and required a costly monthly service contract, even though its target audience was young people who likely couldn't afford the contract.

After less than two months of abysmal sales, Microsoft killed the Kin.

So which launch was more disastrous? From a product standpoint, clearly it's the Kin. Count it as one of the worst products that Microsoft ever released. As a product, the webOS was very solid.

But from a business perspective, clearly the webOS was more disastrous. For a start, HP paid $1.2 billion for Palm, compared to Microsoft paying $500 million for Danger. Then there's the $0.61 to $0.68 per share hit HP will take to close it down. When Microsoft shut down the Kin, there wasn't even a financial blip.

Even more disastrous than that, though, is that webOS was central to HP's ambitions to enter sizable new markets and potentially remake the company. The Kin, by way of contrast, was meant as a sideshow, secondary to Windows Phone 7. So there's no doubt that the webOS launch was clearly a bigger disaster for HP than the Kin was for Microsoft.