Cortana, Microsoft’s Xbox-themed digital assistant, is reportedly coming to Android and iOS as a standalone app. A Reuters report says Cortana will come to Microsoft’s rival mobile platforms after the digital assistant’s debut on Windows 10 later in 2015.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of Microsoft working on Cortana for non-Windows devices. In November, Microsoft chief experience officer Julie Larson-Green said during a meeting with reporters that Cortana could come to other platforms.
by making Cortana a basic feature of Windows 10, Microsoft will be putting the digital assistant on the desktops of many Android and iOS users. Extending its reach beyond Microsoft’s mobile platform, therefore, makes sense. To be effective, any digital assistant requires access to all kinds of information, including important data pulled from phones such as location history and Web searches.
Bringing a marquee Windows feature to other platforms also emphasises, yet again, the shifting priorities for Microsoft as it looks to become a truly cross-platform software provider.
Reuters also says Microsoft is planning some improvements to Cortana according to a company artificial intelligence research project called Einstein.
It’s not clear what kind of improvements Microsoft is planning, but from the Reuters interview with Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and part of the Einstein project, it sounds like the focus is on better understanding of context within e-mail. Cortana already parses e-mail to surface reminders for, say, an upcoming flight. If the Cortana improvements work out as Microsoft is hoping, however, the digital assistant could become better at predicting a user’s needs, similar to Google Now.
If Cortana does come to Android and iOS it won’t be the first time we’ve seen a digital assistant ship as its own app. Apple’s Siri began life as a third party iOS app that was later acquired by the company, and Google currently offers a stripped down version of Google Now on iOS.
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