Microsoft Denies That Cortana is Dead (Premium)

After a year of near silence on the topic---or, as Microsoft puts it, "an exciting and productive year"---the software giant claims that it is expanding the availability of Cortana to various consumer electronics devices. It's a nice story. But there is no evidence of it actually happening.

"We continue to grow the Cortana ecosystem to help people get things done across work and life," a post credited to Microsoft AI corporate vice president Jordi Ribas reads. "To kick-off 2018, we’re making it easier than ever for [hardware partners] and developers to build for Cortana."

As I noted earlier this week in Digital Assistants Loom Large Over CES, But Where is Cortana? (Premium), however, Cortana is basically nowhere to be seen at the mammoth annual trade show. Google Assistant and, to a lesser degree, Amazon Alexa dominate.

Google's presence at the show is particularly impressive: After adding two Assistant-based devices at CES 2017, the firm this year unveiled a stunning array of partners creating Android TVs, Smart TVs, smart speakers, smart displays, smart headphones, automotive solutions, and more all running off of Google Assistant.

By comparison, Microsoft's partners released exactly one device in 2017, the Harman Kardon Invoke. And we've been tantalized by a second device, the JCI Glas thermostat, which will allegedly arrive this year. (To be fair, the device is at CES.) That's it.

For 2018, Microsoft says it has "partnered with industry leaders including Allwinner, Synaptics, TONLY, and Qualcomm, to develop reference designs for new Cortana experiences."

Sorry. Reference designs? Guys. This battle is already over. Reference designs should have happened two years ago.

Microsoft told Mary Jo Foley that more is on the way.

"In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort," a Microsoft spokesperson told her. "Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers."

The delusional nature of this work is astonishing. By comparison, Google Assistant now works with over 225 home control brands and more than 1,500 devices. That's the bar.

Worse, Microsoft's best client-side partners, PC makers, are racing to add Amazon Alexa capabilities to their Windows 10-based PCs and/or to release Alexa- or Google Assistant-based smart appliances. For example, both HP and Lenovo, the top two PC makers in the world, demonstrated Alexa on Windows 10 at CES. Lenovo also announced the world's first Google Assistant smart screen this week.

Brad and I were so stunned by this push for rival Microsoft technologies, that we asked representatives of several PC makers at CES about Cortana. No one uses the technology, we were routinely told. And they are simply delivering the functionality that their customers actually want.

We also asked whether ...

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