Microsoft Is Discontinuing HoloLens 2, With No Replacement
HoloLens 2 production has ended, Microsoft confirmed to UploadVR.
Now is the last time to buy the device before stock runs out, the company has been telling its partners and customers.
HoloLens 2 will continue to receive “updates to address critical security issues and software regressions” until December 31 2027. As soon as 2028 starts, software support for HoloLens 2 will end.
For the original HoloLens headset from 2016, software support will end after December 10 of this year, just over two months from now. Production of it ended back in 2018.
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 housed in the rear of the strap to deliver a balanced comfortable design.
With passthrough headsets years away back then, and Magic Leap still focused on consumers, HoloLens 2 dominated the enterprise AR market for years.
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
While HoloLens 2 is being discontinued, Microsoft tells UploadVR it remains “fully committed” to the militarized HoloLens IVAS.
The US Army plans to run a company-level operational test of it in early 2025, ahead of a plan to decide whether to enter full-scale production by late 2025.
David Heaney
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.
David Heaney
HoloLens 2’s discontinuation comes as Meta itself revealed a prototype of its own transparent AR device, called Orion, which fits a much wider field of view into the form factor of a thick pair of glasses.
