It looks like Microsoft has their eyes set on improving Japanese industrial efforts with its MR platform. The latest of companies to bring Microsoft HoloLens googles into their production line is Toyota Motors. The Japanese automaker joins the host of other Asia-based companies who make the most of Microsoft Mixed Reality headset.
The impact such technology has on corporate production can hardly be overstated. The possibility to enhance production line efforts by overlaying virtual information onto real world is well documented. Toyota, staying true to their kaizen philosophy, is always the favorite as far as emerging technologies are concerned. What Microsoft Mixed Reality headset offers Toyota is the overall improvement that doesn’t fit a single category of production efforts. Meanwhile, Toyota deal is an extension of Microsoft’s idea to digitalize the corporate big-data services.
Information technologies take various shapes and forms, all of which lead towards an inevitable digitalization of businesses. For Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, today everything is run by software. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re a bank’, he says, ’it doesn’t matter if you’re in retail or in automotive. All of you are in the software business and in the digital business going forward’. The statement, though slightly pompous, rings true in a following manner: corporate business as we know it would not be possible without an effective organization of big data services. As Microsoft is moving forward to become the uncrowned king of corporate big data analysis, the company has to maintain the forefront of new tech development and application.
Microsoft Mixed Reality headset sure does play its role in this. Particularly in Japan, where HoloLens is useful every industry you take. In furniture retail business for instance, Nitori is relying on chat tools from Microsoft to communicate the distribution. Construction Company, Komatsu, too, relies heavily on digital data for their project operation runs, having entire sites digitalized. Toyota motors, for their part, is on the verge of making a radical shift towards Mixed Reality factory floor production. Ranging from comparatively speaking mundane tasks like checking paint thickness, and all the way towards more challenging endeavors, Microsoft Mixed Reality headset will definitely bring about a change of pace and effectiveness to the tasks‘ completion.
Microsoft themselves have little room for idleness in the corporate client sphere. Though much better than in the early 2000, the 10% cloud services market share is still miles away from what Amazon enjoys. Microsoft, too, paid the price for mobile phone slippages that, at the time, pinned them below the fellow technology juggernauts. Last six months, however, prove to be the Microsoft’s best in recent times, and deserving of a comeback dubbing stock-wise. And a young, unrefined, fresh MR market might have had something to do with it.
The Sun does shine bright in the Far East for Microsoft, though. Toyota’s philosophy of continual improvement is undisputed, and the fact they chose Microsoft Mixed Reality headset speaks volumes. No doubt both will reap huge benefits from this deal, and encourage other carmakers to embrace Mixed Reality technologies.
