Clickbait. There are far more business applications for headset AR in industry than smartphone AR. Smartphone AR is just a toy for the near future. Not to mention Microsoft's SLAM and therefore hologram stability is still the best in the business.
Its like suggesting that the gameboy meant the end of pc gaming just because everyone liked that pokemon thing so much. The applications are so different in terms of scope they're not really worth comparing even though they essentially do the same thing.
You could just as well ask if anyone wants through the camera AR that Apple and Google are pushing. Aside from Pokémon Go, which while successful was hardly a good example of AR tech, I haven't seen anything compelling done with through the camera AR. Snapchat filters are popular but not exactly a game changing application it seems to me.
My guess is that Microsoft's bet is less in AR in its own right, and more that the "phone" - a form factor that has changed once or twice a decade for the past 3 decades or so - is due for a form factor change. And they'd like to be ahead of the curve for once, rather than always catching up.
more like ar on a phone is always going to be a gimmick, its way easier to just interact with the phone in your hand than to try to look through it. Hololense isn't just augmented reality, its 3d hands free augmented reality. arkit is just shitty graphics pasted over your shitty camera view
Something that leaves your hands free and does AR is obviously the eventual form factor for our personal device, but hololens is way too bulky to be that thing. Maybe if they actually get it down to the size of a pair of lenses ... but that will take half a century.
Half a century seems rather pessimistic. Just thinking of smartphone form factor changes in the last few years, a lot of small form factor display technology advances have happened rather rapidly.
