Microsoft will start killing off Cortana for mobile in January

[mongeese]

Big quote: “Cortana is an integral part of our broader vision to bring the power of conversational computing and productivity to all our platforms and devices” …and because it’s so fantastic and important we’ll be “…ending support for the Cortana mobile app on Android and iOS.”

Microsoft’s flawed reasoning betrays the embarrassing reason Cortana is on its deathbed: it sucks, and no one is interested. On January 31, 2020, Microsoft will be ending support for the Cortana mobile app in the UK, Canada, Germany, China, Australia, Mexico, Spain, and India. Precisely what end of support means is a little unclear but given how dependent the digital assistant is upon Cloud-processing, it might be best to say your goodbyes sooner rather than later.

Cortana’s absence on mobile outside of the US also poses a bit of a problem for the Surface Headphones, which rely on the Cortana app for updates and such, but Microsoft will probably have a solution ready by January. Existing notes, to-do lists, and calendar items will automatically be migrated to Microsoft’s other apps.

Despite commandeering the gigantic install base of Windows, Cortana’s become a bit of a bad joke. Even CEO Satya Nadella admitted in January that Microsoft no longer views it as a competitor to Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa. But Microsoft isn’t wasting any time being sore losers, instead, they’ve been steadily increasing their support for Alexa by integrating it into Windows and selling Echo smart speakers in their stores.

Still, that doesn’t mean Cortana is entirely dead. Cortana will still be available in the US and Microsoft has said it will integrate the voice assistant with Office 365. Hopefully that means it’ll get a few useful new features, too.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/82803-microsoft-start-killing-off-cortana-mobile-january.html

 

[madboyv1]

Cortana will still be available in the US and Microsoft has said it will integrate the voice assistant with Office 365.

Rename it Clippy and I'll 100% use it.

 

[CrisisDog]

There was a time when Cortana was the best voice assistant. I remember being in a local music store, using my Windows phone to use song recognition as music played through the store. This was before Alexa or Google were even on mobile. Ask her for the weather? Got a verbal, detailed description, not a web page pull-up like Siri does. But as usual, Microsoft drops the ball while they're ahead, and now they are just looking to bury their mistake.

 

[psycros]

There was a time when Cortana was the best voice assistant. I remember being in a local music store, using my Windows phone to use song recognition as music played through the store. This was before Alexa or Google were even on mobile. Ask her for the weather? Got a verbal, detailed description, not a web page pull-up like Siri does. But as usual, Microsoft drops the ball while they're ahead, and now they are just looking to bury their mistake.

Google voice assistant was on phones over a year before Cortana.

 

[CrisisDog]

Google voice assistant was on phones over a year before Cortana.

Wikipedia says Cortana was on Windows Phone late 2014; Google Assistant showed up early 2016.

 

[Uncle Al]

Couldn't have happened none too soon ......

 

[captaincranky]

M$ has a fairly extensive history of discontinuing support for their own physical device product. (Along with discontinuing the devices themselves).

While this may be, "for the better", as some suggest, it shouldn't come as any sort of surprise.

 

[navuho]

Wikipedia says Cortana was on Windows Phone late 2014; Google Assistant showed up early 2016.

In 2011 it was called "Google Voice" then in 2012 they renamed it to "Google Now", later they renamed it as "Google Assistant" and I call it Google's mess.
The Google assistant were to compete with Apple's Siri, but wasn't that good at the time. Cortana came in 2014 with Windows 10 beta, and first official release is in 2015. Google had assistant 4 years before MS. Now how good it was is another matter

 

[Irata]

There was a time when Cortana was the best voice assistant. I remember being in a local music store, using my Windows phone to use song recognition as music played through the store. This was before Alexa or Google were even on mobile. Ask her for the weather? Got a verbal, detailed description, not a web page pull-up like Siri does. But as usual, Microsoft drops the ball while they're ahead, and now they are just looking to bury their mistake.

Cortana works pretty well on Windows phone. Also like the desktop / phone integration via Cortana. Otoh, on Android and iOS that already have a voice assistant, why would anyone install a third party app like Cortana.

I understand that MS do not want to support platforms that just cost them money, but they should realize that this does not make people more motivated to buy into any new platform they release.