In an interview with the Inquirer, Microsoft's Roger Walkden, commercial lead for HoloLens in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region, said that sales of the augmented reality headset numbered "in thousands, not hundreds of thousands."

HoloLens developer kits first went on sale in the US and Canada in late March last year. Initial deliveries were made in "waves," with prospective developers having to wait months for hardware to become available. Since then, the hardware has spread to a few more countries—the headsets started shipping to Australia, Ireland, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the UK in November 2016, and they should go on sale in China in the first half of this year. The waiting lists have gone away, so supply constraints have eased up to some extent. But compared to most Microsoft products, the developer kits' availability is still very restricted.

The HoloLens developer kit is also very expensive. Initially, Microsoft offered only a $3,000 (£2,700) developer kit. This has been joined by a $5,000 (£4,500) "production" version for enterprise customers. Both use the same hardware, but the production version adds a limited warranty, while the developer kit has no warranty and no refunds available for buyers. The $5,000 kit also includes an "enterprise" version of the HoloLens-specific variant of Windows that adds "kiosk mode" (wherein the headset boots directly into an application, making it a single-purpose device) and some management capabilities.

Clearly, this is not a piece of hardware aimed at the mass market. With the limited availability, one would expect that sales measured in the thousands feels about right. Walkden agrees. He says that Microsoft was "happy with the level of sales" and that shipping thousands of units was "all we need." HoloLens is, for now, a supply-constrained, specialized piece of hardware primarily aimed at developers, but it has seen enough interest from enterprise users that Microsoft has done the bare minimum to repackage it for corporate buyers. This is not a recipe for massive sales.

But the Inquirer appeared unimpressed; its headline reads that Microsoft "admits sales figures are in the 'thousands'"—"admits" being one of those weasel words that creates the implication of guilt or a cover-up without requiring evidence of either. Betanews, too, seemed unimpressed and repeated the "admits" word in its headline. It writes that "Microsoft is not bothered by what could be seen as disappointing sales." Exactly who would see the sales as disappointing, and why they'd do so, is unclear.

The more interesting question about HoloLens is what Microsoft's long-term ambitions for the device are. Microsoft's position in the hardware space is a peculiar one; on the one hand, the company wants to push the computing market in various ways, but on the other hand, it doesn't want to squeeze out its OEM partners. We see this balancing act with the Surface line, for example; Microsoft has inspired copycat designs from the OEMs, but Surface's relatively premium pricing ensures plenty of space for competitors.

In the broader, mixed-reality space, we're probably going to see a similar pattern. When announcing the Creators Update for Windows 10, Microsoft said that a handful of affordable virtual reality headsets from OEMs including Lenovo and Dell would ship this year, supporting the Windows Holographic APIs. But HoloLens won't be Redmond's last foray into this kind of hardware: Walkden said that the current hardware "is version one, and there will be future versions," adding that "the roadmap does exist." This suggests that Microsoft will continue to develop its more technologically advanced, high-end device to sit alongside the simpler headsets.

So while version one may not have the sales levels required to wow the tech press, perhaps version two or three will do the trick.