Microsoft Live Event Touts Innovations In Tablets, Gaming, Wearables, More

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) held a live event in New York City today, beginning at 10:00 EST. The event was expected to unveil a broad spectrum of Microsoft products, including new Lumia phones, a new Surface tablet, a new wearable fitness band, and possible updates on Xbox One and Microsoft’s mixed reality headset HoloLens. Let’s run through all the presentations and see what users and investors will take away from Microsoft’s event.

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Microsoft starts the event by hitting us up with some impressive figures, including the fact that Windows 10 is already being used on over 110 million devices just weeks after its debut and that gamers have already streamed 120 years worth of video game action from their Xboxs to their Windows 10 devices. That leads into a look at Microsoft’s upcoming lineup of games for the Xbox One, which it boasts could be the greatest of all time, for any console. Among the games shown in the accompanying video presentation are Halo 5, Forza, Tomb Raider, and Gears of War, and Microsoft shows off some Xbox One bundles, including ones packed with Fallout 4 and Halo 5.

From Xbox we jump to a live demonstration of Microsoft HoloLens, a mixed reality headset that combines virtual reality elements with the real environment all around you. We see our demo protagonist don a virtual bazooka on his arm and robots begin to virtually break through his living room wall. The player is able to move around, avoiding fire from the enemies while firing off blasts of his own. Perhaps most interestingly, the virtual foes can even use the real environment to their advantage, presumably to seek cover, though this wasn’t apparent in the demo.

Could this be the next big thing in gaming, or will it be another over-hyped disappointment, ala the Move/Kinect? While the demonstration looked somewhat poor, partly due to the slow-as-molasses nature of the action, actually experiencing it with the headset on and at an enhanced speed could be something rather interesting. Microsoft announces that it is taking applications for the HoloLens Development Kit, which is scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2016 for $3,000.

If you haven’t worked up enough of a sweat from dodging fake robots like a lunatic, Microsoft next shows off its Microsoft Band 2 fitness tracker. The band does a lot of what such bands are known for, including tracking calories and sleep, but comes with a much sleeker design, with an OLED Gorilla Glass display. The Band 2 also features Cortana integration and has even been tailored for the golf addict, with it being able to distinguish between putting and driving the ball, and tracking your score in the process.

From the Band it’s on to the stuff you’ve all been waiting for, starting with the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. These babies have octacore and hexacore processors in them (that’s seven and eight cores respectively for you non-math majors) and “tablet class liquid cooling”. 5.2” and 5.7” screens respectively, 20 mp cameras, 4K video recording, and 32GB of expandable storage are just some of the features. Available in November, the phones will retail for $550 and $650 respectively.

Now we’re moving on to the Surface Pro 4, which is thinner and lighter than the Pro 3, yet is 30% more powerful according to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). It also comes with an impressive 16GB of RAM and a 1TB HD, while the slightly-larger 12.3” screen has more than five million pixels crammed onto it. The keyboard has been upgraded with better spacing, and the pen can attach magnetically to the device, ensuring you won’t easily lose it. There’s even a fingerprint scanner, along with Microsoft Hello functionality to log different users in. The Surface Pro 4 will ship on October 26 for $899.

Lastly, we have the Surface Book, Microsoft’s first-ever laptop. Microsoft pulls no punches in saying it’s the most powerful 13.5” laptop ever developed, and claiming it is twice as fast as a MacBook Pro. It runs Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors, in addition to packing in an Nvidia GeForce GPU with GDDR5 memory. The keyboard is detachable from the screen, allowing it to be used on its own as a tablet if desired, while the laptop can run for 12 hours on a single charge, an impressive feat for such a powerful device. The Surface Book will launch on the same day as the Pro 4, for $1,499.

Microsoft is up by 0.60% following the event, and we believe investors will like what they saw from the tech giant, which has steadily become a more popular stock in recent years. 107 investors from our database held $18.32 billion in Microsoft shares, 5.10% of the company’s outstanding stock, as of the end of June. Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital was the largest shareholder of Microsoft at that time among the funds we track, holding 75.27 million shares worth $3.32 billion. Three other investors in our database held Microsoft stakes worth more than $1 billion as of June 30, including Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital.

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