According to a report from The Verge, an upcoming Microsoft press event is likely to offer the first glimpse of HoloLens 2.
Microsoft sent out press invites this week to an event that it will host just ahead of MWC 2019 in Barcelona next month. Official details are very limited: the company would only say that the event will include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, CVP Julia White, and Technical Fellow Alex Kipman.
But even that gives us some clues: that Nadella will be travelling to Barcelona for MWC means this is certainly a significant press event for Microsoft. Then there’s Alex Kipmam, the visionary behind HoloLens, whose closely involved with the company’s overall AR and VR efforts. Kipman was the one to introduce the world to the original HoloLens back in 2015.
It definitely crossed our mind that the upcoming press event could be the moment when Microsoft finally takes the wraps off of HoloLens 2, especially with the original unit being inexplicably out of stock now for weeks on end.
The Verge however reports this outright, calling the event a “HoloLens 2 press event,” and noting that it marks a return to MWC for Microsoft, which in recent years hasn’t had a major presence at the show. The confidence of the headline, written by Senior Editor Tom Warren, suggests he has reason to believe this is a HoloLens 2 event beyond what’s reported in the piece itself.
HoloLens is a standalone AR headset that has had a remarkably long lifespan as a first-gen product in a brand new device category. While the original headset was positioned for developers and enterprise, Microsoft’s long-term vision is that such devices will become part of consumer’s lives too. To that end, it isn’t clear if HoloLens 2 will attempt to make the leap into the consumer space or just aim to be the next step for existing development and enterprise use-cases. Either way, HoloLens 2 is expected to be more compact than its predecessor while expanding the limited field of view of its predecessor.