Developers eager to get their hands on Microsoft’s long-awaited augmented reality headset received some good news on Friday, when CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC that the first version of the HoloLens will be available “within the next year.”
The only catch is that the first version of Microsoft’s (MSFT) HoloLens will be geared more toward “developers and enterprises,” Nadella said in the interview, which means average consumer will likely have to wait a little bit longer to buy a personal HoloLens. Nadella said a “commercial usage” version of the headset would be next in the pipeline. Still, as The Verge points out, Nadella’s latest comments on the HoloLens at least offer some insight into how soon it will be before the holographic computer product ends up in the hands of someone other than a Microsoft employee.
Of course, Microsoft still has big plans when it comes to HoloLens being available for gaming and other commercial uses. Earlier this summer, at E3 2015, the company hosted HoloLens demos featuring gameplay from such popular video games as Minecraft and Halo 5: Guardians. Microsoft has invested heavily in both augmented reality and virtual reality technology, which are two businesses that are expected to generate $150 billion in combined annual revenue by 2020, according to Digi-Capital, a research and advising firm.
