14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft recently announced that Cortana would arrive on Android and iPhones later this year as part of the company's aggressive expansion that includes an unexpected number of app launches on rival platforms.
But as compared to the previous releases, Cortana's arrival on the iPhone doesn't come out of the blue, as people close to the matter have been talking about such plans for months. And yet, seeing it happening is still surprising, mostly because Siri uses the power of Bing search engine, the very same engine that gives life to Cortana.
So at some level, Cortana will compete against a part of it when it becomes available on the iPhone, which makes the whole battle just a matter of implementation, as Apple users would have to choose between Siri, the native personal assistant on their devices, and Cortana, a third-party service promising to offer more “personal” features on their devices.
Siri still has a fair advantage
Needless to say, Cortana seems to be the more advanced digital assistant at the first glance, but it's still hard to say whether Apple users would give up on Siri for a Microsoft product.
And yet, Siri still has a fair advantage on iOS just because it's an integrated service that benefits from all features of the operating system. Some features of Cortana won't be available on iPhones, including the “Hey Cortana” command that allows users to wake up the digital assistant by simply calling it by name.
That was something to be expected on both Android and iOS, but Microsoft hopes that despite this, Cortana will still become the preferred choice for iPhone users.
And now, it's Apple's turn to respond. IOS 9, which is expected to make its public appearance later this summer, is likely to come with an improved version of Siri that would take on Cortana and challenge its somewhat domination in the digital assistant field.
At the same time, other Microsoft-inspired features are also believed to be prepared for the new iOS version, including split-screen multitasking, so it's all going to be a very interesting dispute taking place in Apple's own yard.
