Digital Assistants Loom Large Over CES, But Where is Cortana? (Premium)

I've just arrived in Las Vegas for CES 2018 but the biggest story of the week has already emerged: Digital assistants are taking the city, and our industry, by storm.

On the plane ride here, I considered writing a story that I was calling "And Then There Were Two" in my head. But the cramped and overcrowded flight prevented anything more productive than a bit of list making. No matter: Brad has sort of covered this topic already today in Death By A Thousand Digital Assistants (Premium)---great minds, and all that----noting that we're on the verge of a major consolidation in the digital assistant market. Very clearly, there will be two major players---Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant---going forward, plus Siri.

Siri won't play a major role at CES. But the two market leaders will. In fact, they already have.

I was barely off the plane before I was hit with the first of what would prove to be a series of advertisements for Google Assistant. I don't recall Google ever playing a major role at CES---any role, really---but it's already clear that the search giant is going all out to attract attention here this year. Its branding is everywhere.

That makes sense, because Amazon is also going all out at CES this year. As Mehedi reported earlier today, the retailing giant is partnering with PC makers to bring its Alexa digital assistant technology to Windows 10. Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and others are bringing Alexa to their PCs (and, as you'll see this week, to other hardware devices too).

What Google and Amazon are doing is smart: They're expanding their ecosystems and ensuring that they will be the only two companies left standing when all is said and done.

But it's hard not to wonder about the also-rans. Most obviously Microsoft, which stands to lose a lot of ground as its own partners work to undermine it and replace Cortana---an integral part of Windows 10---with a digital assistant that people actually want to use. This reminds of when PC makers offered a third party web browser as the default, instead of Internet Explorer.

And I think that's all you need to know about Cortana's fate.

On that note, I see Microsoft exiting this market as soon as this quarter, and leaving direct consumer interaction up to the market leaders. Cortana---or at least the voice interaction technology that most think of as Cortana---can and will continue forward of course. But Cortana as a major effort is done. Microsoft's customers, and its partners, have spoken.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Shut out of smartphones and other popular mobile devices, Cortana never stood a chance. And Microsoft's slow push into smart speakers deprived it of another obvious volume market for this technology. The software giant is wise to avoid another long, slow decline like we saw with Windows phone.

But the Windows angle is interesting. With Microsoft pushing more mobile integration points in Windows 10, the firm may have simply decided that allowing W...