Magic Leap is back

Magic Leap 2 will be launching next year — but the bigger news is that they’re now focusing on enterprise applications.

It never made sense what an average consumer would do with an AR headset.

Yes, there’s the Angry Birds game but other than that, it has no real utility for that $2300 price tag.

After the launch of Magic Leap Creator Edition, they fell real short (6,000) of their 100,000 sales goal and the CEO stepped down.

Microsoft’s executive Peggy Johnson was then brought in as the new CEO. She instituted the Hololens playbook — work with enterprise clients to identify use cases, build applications together and then, sell.

This new enterprise-first focus means that now Magic Leap is going up against Microsoft.

Microsoft has a significant headstart — with Hololens 2 in the hands of their massive clientele and Hololens 3 under development. Moreover, Magic Leap is also competing for the same enterprise clients where Microsoft has deep relations because of Azure and Office.

Also, last year, when Magic Leap laid off half of its employees, most of them went to Apple and Facebook to develop their AR efforts.

It’s going to be tough for a single product company to build a futuristic tech with no product-market-fit and go up against the giants.

On a tangent, a question that always pops up in my mind when I think about AR headsets for enterprises is:

Are companies really gonna spend capital for front-line workers to use these expensive headsets on a large scale? The question is not if that happens but when.

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