While the latest report from June said that Microsoft's next HoloLens was slated for the first quarter of next year, Petri's Brad Sams is back to report that the device is once again delayed, this time until late in the second quarter. Originally, the firm was planning to show off the new headset at its Surface event last week.
The next HoloLens, as you'd expect, aims to fix the pain points with the old one. It should be lighter and smaller, have a larger field of view, better battery life, and it will be cheaper than the current $3,000 development kit.
And Microsoft hasn't been shy when talking about the new unit's development. At Build this year, it announced Project Kinect for Azure, saying that the next-gen Kinect sensor is the same that will be in the next HoloLens. It also announced last year that the new HoloLens will include a dedicated AI processor, something that's no surprise with Microsoft's championing the intelligent edge.
Microsoft first unveiled HoloLens in January 2015, and there's been a lot of competition since then. The company didn't start shipping the HoloLens Development Edition until March 2016, and the device hasn't been refreshed since then, nor has the price been lowered. Since then, Apple and Google have launched ARKit and ARCore, respectively, which are phone-based solutions, and Magic Leap is launching its own AR headset.
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