What Alexa is for Amazon, Google Assistant for Android and what Siri is for Apple, Cortana is for Microsoft. It has been the leading smart assistant app for Microsoft users. After the gradual evaporation of mobile Windows, Cortana appeared with its Android and iOS specific apps. Since then, it is widely used by the Microsoft loyalists for smart voice interactions.
But, Microsoft just decided to pull off the app from the iOS and Android market at least in some countries. According to the company, the app will no longer be available from the January 2020 in several countries in North America, Europe and South East Asia. The move can have significant outcome on the next course of actions from Microsoft in the smart home and mobility segment.
Recently, the software giant has published a new support article for the Cortana users spread across UK, Canada and Australia and has clearly stated that the app is going to disappear in these markets from January next year. The app is also supposed to pull off from other countries like UK, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, Australia, and India starting from January 31st.
Cortana was created and unleashed by Microsoft as an integral offering from the company’s broad range of products based on conversational computing. It was integral to the range of software products and applications that Microsoft is building for several years to boost productivity.
It’s still not clear until the Cortana for iOS and Android app will enjoy support from the company. According to a spokesperson from Microsoft, the app still enjoys support from the company across both iOS and Android platforms but it is likely to cease to exist after 31st January next year.
In spite of this move, Microsoft is not actually going to bid goodbye to Cortana. Instead, the move probably corresponds to elaborate plan of creating more value with this digital assistant and make a dominant presence among a bounty of smart assistant solutions from other tech giants. Since the failure of Windows mobile OS made Microsoft lean towards Android, Cortana is probably going to be shaped as a new platform independent smart assistant solution like Amazon Alexa.
As an example of the intent behind this move we can refer to the way Cortana can still be used for syncing content of Microsoft To Do app between Windows 10 PC and Android devices. Though Google Voice Assistant is already having a raging and continuously evolving presence across devices in the Android ecosystem, Cortana in the time to come can be positioned as a platform independent value driven smart assistant solution for both iOS and Android users.
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