Update
Microsoft: Cortana not coming to Android or iOS
Original Story
Microsoft officials revealed during a keynote at the SMX Advanced search-marketing conference this week in Seattle that the company is considering on developing its flagship feature, Cortana, the virtual personal assistant of Windows Phone, for other platforms like iOS and Android.
Marcus Ash, a program manager in Windows Phone group said, “it’s a bit of a head scratcher for us right now.” This comes as an extension of the company’s efforts to push its products to other platforms, encouraging users to get the familiar Windows experience on their device. However, the executives also noted during the keynote that such seamless integration will not be possible due to several reasons.
Ash said that the company will focus on building a more solid experience with Cortana for the Windows environment before the company ventures into other platforms.
Cortana uses information stored by the user on the calendar and other apps in order to carry out the instructions of the user. Ash noted that Cortana might not be able to access such information stored on the users’ devices on other platforms like it does on Windows Phone because the other platforms are built in such a way that external apps do not get access to such information.
Google Now is available on iOS and users are tapping its potential to make their tasks easy. However, Google had similar issues when developing Google Now for other iOS.
Another question to be considered is whether or not iOS users will be able to use a personal assistant other than Siri.
Microsoft has announced that it has plans to bring Cortana to car dashboards in future and also in smart home installations, which suggest that the immediate extension activities might focus only on Windows based devices rather than on other platforms.
