My thoughts on .@tad ‘s thoughts on Microsoft, augmented reality, and virtual reality
Tad Donaghe has posted at Medium again. I’m going to skip over his thoughts on Windows Phone (although I actually owned a Windows phone many years ago) and concentrate on his views about Microsoft’s future endeavors. As Donaghe sees it, Microsoft now has an opportunity to devote additional resources to something else.
Here’s why: Microsoft’s Hololens Augmented Reality offering. By 2020 the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) markets are predicted to be worth more than $150B. I suspect that by 2025 they will dwarf the current mobile market. So, if Microsoft can grab a significant share of the AR and/or VR market, they will be very well positioned to reap huge financial rewards.
I haven’t really looked at this market other than peeking at Kinect a little bit, so I’ll rely on Donaghe’s assertion that while Hololens may not be as advanced as the competing Magic Leap technology, Microsoft has at least exhibited Hololens to people.
And what if Microsoft gets Hololens to market? We all know the story about Microsoft products – version 1.0 often isn’t that good. But in some (not all) cases, Microsoft perseveres and releases version 2.0 and version 3.0, and ends up dominating the market for many years to come. Look at Netscape vs. Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer will be replaced by a new browser in Windows 10, nearly two decades after IE was originally launched. Netscape itself is long gone.
tymshft 