02-23-2017, 10:59 PM
Fast-forward to today, and HoloLens, despite having made some real progress, is still only in the hands of a small number of developers and early adopters. That makes a new report about Microsoft's hardware plans for HoloLens a little concerning -- particularly given how its peers have gotten AR religion. Tech journalist Paul Thurrott, responsible for many Microsoft scoops in the past, reports Microsoft has adjusted its HoloLens hardware roadmap to cancel the planned launch of a second-generation device. Instead, the company will focus on launching a third-gen product that provides something "closer to a generational leap" relative to the current model, but that isn't expected until 2019. This might effectively mean that a commercial, mass-market version of HoloLens won't arrive for two years. The current model is only available through a developers kit that launched about a year ago. Developers -- the list includes Autodesk (ADSK) , Twitter (TWTR) and many indie game developers, as well as Microsoft itself -- have come up with a number of intriguing productivity, entertainment and communications apps. But since the kit costs $3,000, few consumers or office workers are currently using them.
And just maybe the 2019 HoloLens will support outdoor usage. The fact the current model can only be used indoors prevents it from taking on many of the AR applications currently supported by mobile apps that leverage a phone's camera view. On the other hand, two years gives rivals a lot of time to launch a competing product. Apple (AAPL) , which has made multiple AR-related acquisitions and whose CEO has been making positive remarks about the technology's potential, was reported in November to be thinking about creating smart glasses that could be paired with iPhones, and show images and information in a user's field-of-view. The report added such glasses would launch in 2018 "at the earliest."