Recent rumors indicated that Microsoft’s next-generation Hololens 3 mixed reality headset could be dead, but now there’s a chance that might not be true at all. In a tweet, Alex Kipman, who invented HoloLens and is currently a technical fellow at Microsoft, seemed to indicate that the product could still be alive.
As a recap, the whole saga started after a Business Insider report revealed the state of internal disarray and uncertainty within the HoloLens Team. The report also indicated that Microsoft could be working with Samsung on a next-generation headset, and HoloLens 3 was canceled in the middle of last year when that project began. Kipman, though, says not to “believe what you read on the internet,” and that “HoloLens is doing great.”
don't believe what you read on the internet. #HoloLens is doing great and if you search said internet they also said we had cancelled #HoloLens2… which last I checked we shipped with success [)-)
— Alex Kipman (@akipman) February 3, 2022
In 2017, similar reports indicated that the follow-up to the original HoloLens could have been dead. As you know, that wasn’t true, and just two years later in 2019, the HoloLens 2 launched with improvements to the field of vision and other areas. Kipman poked fun at this, saying that “if you search the internet, they also said we had canceled HoloLens 2, which last I checked, we shipped with success.”
Microsoft HoloLens 2/Microsoft
Of course, no one at Microsoft officially is talking about HoloLens 3, but this is a good indicator that it might still be in the works. Before the recent saga, previous rumors suggested the headset could be a little more like reading glasses. However, it’s still uncertain if it could be a consumer product or an enterprise one, which is reportedly another source of a rift on the HoloLens product team at Microsoft. In previous interviews, Kipman indicated that HoloLens technology wasn’t ready for consumers just yet.
As more players like Meta, and even Apple with its rumored headset, enter the mixed reality space once only occupied by Microsoft, HoloLens is more important to monitor. Many Microsoft employees who used to work on the HoloLens team have left the company for Microsoft’s competitors, but Microsoft recently picked up key talent. It hired Ruben Caballero, a former Apple executive, to work on the HoloLens team. Previously, Caballero was in charge of Apple’s wireless technology, including antennas that are embedded in iOS devices.