Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana through its app will stop working on Android and iOS in the next few months. As highlighted in The Verge report, the feature will stop working for users in India from 31 January 2020. However, the report did mention that users in the US can continue to use it for now, without giving an exact timeline for its discontinuation in the region.
The service will also be disappearing from Microsoft’s Android launcher app in countries like UK, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India among others.
Cortana hasn’t managed to work its way through the Indian market, even with Android, as Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri continue to head the segment, so it makes to cull the app from its plans for the Indian market.
The Cortana app was mainly used to control settings for products like the Surface headphone, which also didn’t make it to our shores since its debut earlier this year. Cortana for Android and iOS was made available in late 2015, with the aspiration to connect Windows PC with millions of mobile devices running on Android and iOS.
But as things stand, it has become evident that Cortana doesn’t have the means to compete with Google or Amazon’s voice assistant, and company CEO, Satya Nadella clear stated that earlier this year.
However, taking down support for Cortana on these platforms doesn’t mean the end of the road for the product. It is now being integrated into Microsoft Office 365 productivity apps.
In addition to this, Cortana will come built into Outlook, the mailing client, on Android and iOS, to offer voice-enabled response, including reading out mails, if you’re into it.
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