Is there a hidden meaning to the Microsoft hardware event teaser image?

Earlier this week, Microsoft formally announced an upcoming hardware event taking place October 2 in New York City. The announcement was of an image of a semi-outlined version of the Microsoft logo, with the text "Save The Date" below it. This announcement image has everyone talking, with speculation as to what the semi-outlined Microsoft logo could possibly mean.

Does it spell out something? Is it a hint at what's going to be announced? The internet has been rife with a wide range of theories and speculative ideas. Unfortunately, I don't think this specific announcement image is hinting at anything other than the date. If you look closely, the top two shapes appear to be a stylized version of a 1 and a 0, and the bottom two shapes are stylizing a 0 and 2.

Put those numbers together, and you get 10/02, the date of the hardware event. Some people think the lines represent the different kinds of Surface hardware being announced, including a Surface Book, Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and a foldable Surface. Others see the word "lite" if you rearrange all the lines to make it spell that out. I think that's a little far fetched, but a cool idea.

Hints have happened before

The basis of people thinking there's a hidden meaning to the image does have some reasoning behind it. Tech companies such as Apple, Google, and even Microsoft have hinted at things they expect to announce in their announcement and invitation images in the past. For example, Microsoft sent out an invitation that was heavy on the idea of it being a "small" event for the now canceled Surface Mini unveiling.

For the launch of the Surface RT 2, the invites sent to press had an image of a Surface outlined in a glow effect, hinting at the switch from black to grey for the outer housing color. And for the Surface Studio, the text "imagine what you'll do" hinted at the creator focus of the Surface Studio and the Windows 10 Creators Update. So there is precedent behind thinking there's a hint in the image for this years event.

Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case outside of the date. Of course, we can't know that for sure. Perhaps Microsoft will throw in a hint with the actual media invites that are expected to go out to press in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, what are you hoping Microsoft will announce in October? Let us know in the comments.