HoloLens 2 production has ended.
Microsoft confirmed to UploadVR that it told its customers and partners now is the last time to buy the device before stock runs out.
HoloLens 2 will continue to receive “updates to address critical security issues and software regressions” until 2028. As soon as that year starts, software support for HoloLens 2 will end.
For the original HoloLens headset from 2016, the same will happen after December 10 2024, just over two months from now.
HoloLens 2: A Category-Defining Device
HoloLens 2 launched in 2019, three years after the original, with upgrades to almost every aspect: a wider field of view, higher resolution, eye tracking, vastly improved hand tracking, and more powerful compute now housed in the rear of the strap to deliver a balanced and comfortable design.
HoloLens 2’s balanced design, with compute in the rear.
With passthrough headsets still years out, and Magic Leap still focused on consumer, Microsoft dominated the enterprise AR market for years with HoloLens 2.
However, the headset’s field of view, while better than its predecessor, remained relatively narrow, and its displays actually introduced regressions in image quality.
Magic Leap pivoted to enterprise just one month after HoloLens 2 launched, and in 2022 launched Magic Leap 2 with a wider field of view and more powerful compute unit. Combined with Varjo launching high resolution passthrough in its XR headset series and recently Apple and Meta launching viable passthrough headsets, HoloLens 2 simply hasn’t been competitive in recent years.
Microsoft seemed to tease the possibility of an eventual HoloLens 3 two years ago, but a Business Insider report claimed it was in fact canceled due to “confusion and strategic uncertainty” within the company. In 2022 Microsoft’s long-time mixed reality figurehead Alex Kipman left the company, and in both 2023 and 2024 its mixed reality division saw significant layoffs.
IVAS & The Meta Partnership
Microsoft tells UploadVR it remains “fully committed” to the militarized HoloLens IVAS. The US army plans to run company-level operational test of it in early 2025, ahead of a plan to decide whether to enter full-scale production by late 2025.
In the general enterprise space, however, Microsoft is no longer a hardware player. Instead, its new strategy revolves around its partnership with Meta.
So far that partnership has brought Xbox Cloud Gaming and Office web apps to the Horizon OS of Quest headsets, and will soon bring automatic extension of Windows 11 laptops by just looking at them.
