Microsoft revealed more information on plans to move their personal digital assistant, named Cortana, to iOS and Android devices.
A competitor to Google Now and Apple’s Siri, Cortana is one of the most popular features found on Windows Phones, a voice search with a personality, capable of some fairly sophisticated actions when using casual speech commands. I’m a huge fan of person and location based reminders. Microsoft says we’ll see standalone Cortana apps for other phone platforms this Autumn.
“This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame,” said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research.
It’s a smart move which plays to Microsoft’s strengths in delivering services with as broad a reach as possible, converting consumers using competitor’s hardware into customers through software and apps. I’ll always be a fan of more competition, especially when you can go cross platform. Maybe someday I’ll even get that IBM Watson app I’ve been wanting…
We’ll learn more about Microsoft’s strategy later this year.
(via Reuters)
Why bother buying a Windows phone when Microsoft’s entire ecosystem is already available on iOS & Android? I don’t think this is a smart move at all. Sure it’s great news for Microsoft who are a software company but it’s going to kill the already struggling Lumia line.
They’re in a tough position. It’s sort of a chicken and egg spiral. They need people to be using their services, but they can’t convince people to migrate to their phone platform. We’ll have to see if this strategy makes the MS ecosystem more attractive, or if it kills their phone line.