Recently, shortly after Microsoft updated its Dynamics 365 Guides mixed reality solution, it fired about 100 employees engaged in building metaverse applications in scenarios such as power plants, industrial robots and transportation networks. Some media believe that this means that Microsoft completely disbands the industrial metaverse team.
In fact, Microsoft has not completely disbanded the industrial metaverse team, and will continue to promote the industrial metaverse ecology and provide corresponding tools and platform services. However, due to the rise of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, Microsoft has shifted its business focus to areas that are easier to monetize, such as artificial intelligence chatbots and the Bing search engine, reducing investment in the development of industrial metaverse applications.
Microsoft also shared its commitment to the HoloLens 2 and the company's broader MR project in a recent company blog post. Microsoft will continue to produce and support HoloLens 2, including monthly software updates, to ensure its enterprise customers can leverage the HoloLens 2 and support platform for critical work. Microsoft says it is also continuing to update Dynamics 365 guidelines and remote assistance to meet customer needs.
As a platform company, Microsoft does not have industrial genes, and it is difficult to have greater achievements in the industrial metaverse application market in the long run. Microsoft's original intention in entering the industrial metaverse application is only to better provide reference cases to application partners, and now that it has completed its mission, it is inevitable to reduce the number of employees in the industrial metaverse application team. However, this does not mean that the industrial metaverse has no prospects, and with the continuous enrichment and maturity of the industrial metaverse ecosystem, Microsoft and its partners will accelerate the promotion of manufacturing enterprises towards Industry 4.0.
Microsoft's industrial metaverse app is just a demonstration
After Microsoft missed out on the mobile operating system, the layout in the XR field was more radical. As early as 2015, HoloLens was launched and the MR platform was built, hoping to seize the next generation platform opportunities with the advantages of the Windows ecosystem. Analysts pointed out that like the PC era, Microsoft and Intel continue to work closely together in the XR era, using Intel Cherry Trail chips and Microsoft custom chips HPU (Holographic Processing Unit) to achieve both high performance and low power consumption.
However, HoloLens products are too advanced, most manufacturers cut into the VR field with a lower threshold, although the awareness and demand for MR in some sub-industries has improved in recent years, but "MR+ applications" are still too advanced for most industries. And the global tech giants are more enthusiastic about the easier to popularize VR, Microsoft is almost alone in the MR field, unable to sweep the global market in a short period of time like ChatGPT. Microsoft had to move from the background to the foreground, enter the application market, and demonstrate to ecological partners.
However, MR costs are high, which is not suitable for consumer market popularization, and industrial metaverse scenarios have hard demand for MR, and Microsoft hopes to lead ecological partners to enter MR+ industrial applications. Industry insiders pointed out that with the existing HoloLens design, battery life, weight and application conditions, it is difficult for consumers to pay, and it is more suitable for landing in industrial scenarios, so Microsoft has made MR applications in aviation, electricity, elevators and other scenarios to attract more industry partners to join the Microsoft MR ecosystem.
Microsoft has always positioned itself as a platform company, and the original intention of entering the industrial metaverse is not to enter the application, but to provide more reference cases for more industrial application ecological partners. 0glasses CTO Wang Youchu pointed out that in the early days of the MR industry, Microsoft could not run to the application foreground, because ecological partners may not be able to fully tap the potential of HoloLens 2 applications, which is not conducive to its rapid promotion in all walks of life, but now Microsoft has completed the historical mission of industrial application demonstration, so it is understandable that Microsoft removed most of the industrial metaverse team members.
XR is the next generation of computing platforms, and Microsoft won't give up. Microsoft will continue to promote the update and iteration of HoloLens, and it is expected that HoloLens 3 will be released in the second half of the year or next year, providing better software and hardware services to application ecosystem partners.
There are three major challenges to industrial metaverse applications
Microsoft's layoff of most of the industrial metaverse team members does not mean that the industrial metaverse has no market prospects. In the era of Industry 4.0, the traditional manufacturing industry is in urgent need of transformation and upgrading, MR+ can greatly improve production efficiency, reduce risks, meet the urgent needs of manufacturing enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and has broad market prospects. Industry insider Zhou Qiang (pseudonym) pointed out that only the manufacturing of equipment manual MR has a large number of market demand, which can reduce the learning efficiency of equipment operators, save a lot of the cost of inviting foreign equipment experts, such as CNOOC if the seawater equipment failure, and can not timely invite the corresponding foreign equipment experts, may be forced to stop production, resulting in huge losses, if there is a equipment MR electronic manual, through internal training may be able to solve the current equipment failure, greatly improve efficiency and reduce costs.
However, there are at least three major challenges in the industrial metaverse application market, including technology, engineering and human networking: first, MR integrates information from the real world and the virtual world, with real-time interaction, involving head pose tracking, three-dimensional registration, human-computer interaction, etc., and the technical threshold is high; Second, manufacturing industry practitioners are more closed, unlike the consumer market is more open, as long as through advertising can reach potential customers, if there is no industrial experience, did not enter the industrial circle, it is difficult to find the corresponding customers. Wang Youchu, CTO of 0glasses, said, "If you don't have connections, it's useless for you to go to a central state-owned enterprise, because you can't even find the door, let alone who to look for"; Third, high engineering threshold, entering the industrial metaverse application requires industry engineering background, Microsoft has no industry accumulation, although it has technical capabilities, but it is difficult to complete the needs of industry customers. Wang Youchu believes that the application of the industrial metaverse seems simple, but if many enterprises find themselves unable to complete after understanding the needs of customers, if the industry experience and knowledge is easy to fall into the pit. Microsoft's industrial metaverse platform is only 40% of the workload for industry applications, and 60% of the workload needs to be completed, for example, industrial metaverse applications need to ensure reliability, stability, security, etc. The industrial metaverse platform is equivalent to the development version of the chip, which cannot be directly applied to industrial scenarios and needs to be further developed according to the needs of industry scenarios. This requires application developers to have rich industry experience, enrich electromagnetic waves, nuclear radiation, etc. in industrial scenarios in the industrial metaverse platform, and meet the needs of industrial customers.
In addition, the most important thing in the metaverse is to have civilization and culture, just like the three-body world. At present, it is difficult for the whole world to achieve the state of world harmony, it is difficult to achieve unity at the software and hardware level, and it is difficult to achieve the metaverse. Guo Zhenyu, an industrial metaverse practitioner, said that the current metaverse may still be in a relatively local stage of development like the public cloud, private cloud and government cloud of the past. The industrial metaverse is limited by the current geopolitical conflicts and the stage of industrial civilization, and the equality of industrial civilization cannot be realized. In this case, the industrial metaverse technology and market are not solidly supported, and the technology giants do not have enough research and development momentum.