Microsoft to clip Cortana’s digital assistant wings

Yesterday it was Bixby’s turn, today it’s Cortana.

Microsoft has revealed they have plans to sunset their proprietary digital assistant on a variety of platforms including Apple’s iOS and Android beginning in 2021.

In addition to native apps on non-Windows platforms “Cortana skills” will be deprecated in September with Microsoft asking those to use the newly integrated Cortana services in their Office and Outlook Mobile products instead.

Harmon Kardon, the manufacturers of a Cortana integrated smart speaker will also have its support cut from under them in January of next year. I’m sure all 10 of you that bought one of them are gutted?

Lastly, and this one really twists the knife in. Microsoft will remove Cortana support from their own line of Surface Headphones, instead pivoting the voice controls to interact with Outlook Mobile with the “Play My Emails” feature.

You can read more about the upcoming changes to Cortana and Microsoft’s plans in their support doc, Upcoming changes to Cortana.