HoloLens Development Edition. (credit: Microsoft)

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 developer kit. This has been joined by a $5,000 “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.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a new batch of deals to share to kick off your weekend. Now you can get a Dell tower PC at its lowest price yet: snag the Dell XPS 8910 desktop, featuring an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive, for just $554. That’s nearly $300 off its original price, which is a great deal on a tower that has all the beloved features from the previous 8900 model, plus a few extra perks.

Check out the rest of the deals below.

Enlarge / Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Edith Ramirez testifying in Congress last May. A conservative group says Ramirez has taken antitrust positions, including the recent suit against Qualcomm, “that weaken US patent rights.”

The FTC sued Qualcomm last week just days before President Trump took the oath of office. The FTC lawsuit says that Qualcomm’s patent licensing practices amount to an illegal “patent tax” on smartphone makers who choose non-Qualcomm processors.

Yesterday, conservative groups including Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union sent a letter (PDF) to the White House calling the FTC lawsuit “midnight regulation at its worst,” a misuse of antitrust law to “undercut patent property rights and conservative free market principles.” The letter was first reported by Morning Consult.