

They're likely to always be the preferred choice of non-Windows users. Those competing digital assistants will be easier to access and will offer richer platform integration and greater capabilities. It's not even obvious why iOS or Android users would care about Cortana when they have Siri and Google Now instead. While having more users will help aspects of Cortana-more users talking to her should improve the quality of speech recognition-it does little to help sell any of Microsoft's software or services. Nonetheless, the value and utility feels a little hard to divine. Stick to the Windows family and you'll also get mobility of third-party apps, as the Universal Windows Platform makes it possible for developers to write software that spans the full range of device types and form factors.īut even with a Windows PC and an Apple or Android phone, you'll still get Microsoft's set of services wherever you go. Use Windows on your phone or tablet, and you'll have in some ways the best realization of this ambition: services like OneDrive and Music will be installed and set up automatically. Similarly, Microsoft's Edge browser with its Cortana integration will remain Windows-only, as Redmond has no intention of making the browser cross-platform. While things like questions, alerts (including geographic ones) and flight tracking will all work, Cortana on iOS and Android won't be able to launch apps, change system settings, or respond to the always-available hands-free "Hey Cortana" trigger that's available in Windows 10 and on some Windows Phones.

Microsoft says that the experience will be comparable to the one in Windows and Windows Phone, but not identical. As part of this, certain features that are currently Windows-only-such as Music's support for playing music from OneDrive-will be added to the iOS and Android apps.Īnd it also means that Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant will be made available for those platforms. The purpose is to ensure that Microsoft's set of synchronized services are always available if you have a picture or song or document on your PC, it should be available and usable on your phone, too, and vice versa. This app should be available in a new Insider Preview of Windows 10 that will ship in the next few weeks. Office, OneNote, OneDrive, Skype, and Outlook are all out now and will soon be joined by Cortana and Music.

Plug an iOS or Android handset into a Windows 10 machine and the Phone Companion will help install Microsoft's range of phone apps onto the device. Windows 10 will come with an app called the Phone Companion that's designed to help Windows 10 work better with smartphones. Confirming March reports that Microsoft would make a Cortana app for iOS and Android, Microsoft announced today that a Cortana app will ship for Android in late June and for iOS later in the year.
