Magic Leap appointed Peggy Johnson, a former Microsoft executive, as its new CEO. On 1 August, Johnson will start managing the company, replacing existing CEO and co-founder Rony Abovitz. Her appointment is part of the struggling mixed reality company's move towards business customers and away from consumer entertainment and personal computing.
Johnson was Microsoft's executive vice president of business development as well as the head of its M12 venture capital fund. After he announced plans to retire in May, She told The New York Times that she was talking to Abovitz about the job.
It is still unclear what will be Abovitz 's role after the transition, however he has previously said that through Magic Leap's board of directors he will provide strategy and vision.
Before joining Microsoft in 2014, Johnson, who ran the Internet Services division of Qualcomm, told the Times that mixed reality today is comparable to early cellular phones or cloud computing. In the early and the middle of the 1900s, mixed or augmented reality technology enjoyed a boom but in recent years, many AR companies either shifted their focus or have completely shut down.
Most recently, in June, the Bose plan was abandoned, and Google acquired the consumer's AR start-up North, nixing a pair of North's Focals second generation. Magic Leap cut hundreds of employees in the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, but reports to the Times that, since then, it has secured an investment of $375 million (previously $350 million) in operational maintenance.
There are still many challenges to Magic Leap. Currently , the company is working on a second generation headset, following an impressive but limited first generation product.
While the pandemic provides new opportunities in areas such as remote work, local entertainment such as theme parks have suffered a big blow, once viewed as a promising venue for mixed-reality activities. Magic Leap was also forced to delay, once several 2020 film festivals were canceled, the launch of an ambitious narrative project called The Last Light.
Microsoft, however, is one of the few major success stories in the industry, has transformed its HoloLens headset from 2015 into a hardware product focused on business.
The work of Johnson did not focus on HoloLens, but the fact that the existing business division gained Microsoft a major benefit, and Johnson could help Magic Leap with its expertise in this field — even if the future of the company remains very uncertain.
