‘Microsoft canceled Hololens variant for consumers last year’

Microsoft was working on a cheaper variant of its Hololens headset for businesses. The American company scrapped the project late last year in preparation for the coming economic recession, says business newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

It was already known that Microsoft wanted to collaborate with Samsung on the headset. That plan has since been scrapped, too. writes WSJ. The intention was that Samsung would make the hardware for the headset, while Microsoft would provide the software. The project should have brought the Hololens to the consumer market. The Hololens 2 is still a product for companies, with a purchase price of 3000 dollars that is too high for consumers.

The newspaper has heard about the scrapping of the project from former employees. About 100 employees have left working on Hololens in recent years, and many have gone to Meta to work on the Quest headsets, the paper said. The division is split into hardware and software. That software, such as Teams, will be included on the Meta Quest headsets, the company announced a few weeks ago.

Samsung had wanted to make the hardware, because it has experience with hardware and no longer develops its own Gear VR headsets. Microsoft presented the first Hololens in 2015, with a successor in 2019. It is an augmented reality headset that runs on a variant of Windows that is made for mixed reality.

Looking Back: 2019 Hololens 2 Video Preview