An explosive new report from Business Insider confirms everyone’s worst fear regarding HoloLens and Mixed Reality: Microsoft has no idea what it’s doing.

The story, which relied on reports from “more than 20 current and former employees,” is a damming expose on the HoloLens division, headed by Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman. The entire program is apparently in complete disarray.

The news is devastating for those who thought that with HoloLens, announced in 2015, Microsoft would have an enormous advantage in the market because it was so early and ahead of everyone else.

In case you missed it, here is a tl;dr of Ashley Stewart’s excellent reporting:

• HoloLens 3 was reportedly canceled in mid-2021.
• That timing was around when Microsoft partnered with Samsung for a mixed reality device.
• The choice to rely on Samsung for hardware while Microsoft focuses on software is causing disruption.
• The mixed reality and HoloLens teams are infighting over strategy: consumers vs. enterprise (and military).
• The leadership team has largely failed to address the concerns of employees working on these projects.
• The $22 billion Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) for the US military is having major quality issues and is behind schedule.
• At least 25 Microsoft mixed reality employees left Microsoft and joined Facebook’s Meta in 2021, but it may be more than 100 employees.

It’s no wonder why one Microsoft employee called it a “s–t show.” I have never heard of such a division in this much chaos in all my years of covering Microsoft.

History repeats itself

Microsoft Kinect nearly sunk all of Xbox.Source: Windows Central

What’s so troubling about all this negative news regarding Windows Mixed Reality is how familiar it all is to those who follow Microsoft. The company has a terrible track record of shipping consumer devices and creating new categories. There’s Windows Phone, of course, but also Zune, the Courier Project, Surface Neo, Windows 10X, Project Andromeda, Kinect, Band, Kin, the entire Nokia acquisition, and some would lump in Surface Duo.

Even Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) has been in doubt despite being years ahead of anyone else, shipping free with all Windows 10 PCs, and having strong OEM support (HP, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, and Dell all had WMR headsets).

This seems like a slam dunk of an idea, but it never happened.Source: Microsoft

On the contrary, Microsoft’s Xbox division, save for a few shaky years, has been nailing it, which explains why it is pivoting (and investin