Mobile phones from Microsoft’s socially-inclined Kin line are already getting big price cuts just a month after they hit the market. That’s good news for consumers, sure, but it might be indicative of poor sales for the handsets.

The Kin One will drop from $50 to $30, and the Kin Two will see a 50% cut from $100 to $50 as part of a broader Verizon price cut initiative, according to the The Boy Genius Report.

The Kin phones feature an innovative user interface that puts visual social activity feeds right on your home screen, and lets you share any item of interest with friends just by dragging it onto an ever-present social “Spot” icon. We were impressed with the design when we first saw it, and most everyone has probably noticed just how much marketing muscle has gone into the brand.

Unfortunately, clever design and marketing might not have been enough to compensate for poor positioning in Verizon’s phone line-up. Though Microsoft hasn’t made any announcements about sales figures, sharp price drops this early on usually mean a phone’s not selling well.

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The Data Plans Are Too Steep

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The phones themselves were actually attractively priced already; it’s the data plans that are the problem. Wenoted that when they first launched. Both Kin phones require smartphone-like data plans that put the minimum cost of ownership at nearly $70 per month — at least if you want to use those cool social features that the Kin brand is all about.

Once you’re paying that much for service, you might as well get a full-on smartphone like an iPhone orAndroid. You could even wait a few months and get a device running Microsoft’s own, more robust Windows Phone 7.

What do you think? Will these price drops help the Kin phones sell better despite their expensive data plans? Let us know in the comments.