14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone has quite a large pool of fans in India, especially due to Nokia’s brand, which has been among the most popular in the last couple of years. Although the Finnish company is no more in the smartphone business, Microsoft took over, and Indian customers should expect new devices that will certainly fulfill their needs.
The Lumia 630 that has been recently released in India in both single- and dual-SIM versions is the only Windows Phone 8.1 device available in the country, but Micromax has just announced its new smartphones powered by Microsoft’s operating system, so Windows Phone fans will soon get more options.
But what about the new features and services Microsoft promised to bring to the market along with Windows Phone 8.1? Well, some of them will be available right out of the box, while others will be rolled out later on, as Microsoft finishes working on them.
One of the most important selling points for Windows Phone is Cortana, which will be rolled out in the United States initially, followed by China and the UK.
India is an important market for Microsoft, or it should be if the company starts launching new devices priced aggressively. Cortana needs to be available in India as soon as possible and it looks like Microsoft is taking into consideration users’ feedback and will bring its intelligent personal assistant this year.
According to Microsoft’s Marcus Ash, group manager for Cortana, based on the usage of the US English version of Cortana in India, his team has just started working on the Indian version.
@giri7627 Based on usage of the US English version in India from Cortana developer preview users, we started working on it now.
— Marcus Ash (@marcusash) June 17, 2014
Windows Phone users in India who already installed the Developer Preview released back in April seem to have enabled Cortana even though the personal assistant defaults to the US English version.
There are many Cortana features that Windows Phone users in India can’t take advantage of, but they will be available once the service is released in the country.
While Marcus Ash hasn’t been able to offer a specific release date for Cortana in India, he has mentioned Microsoft plans to “ship something before 2015.” This means that Windows Phone enthusiast in India might get Cortana by the end of this year.
Microsoft seems to have a tight schedule releasing Cortana in many countries where it’s expected to arrive by the end of the year. It remains to be seen which countries Microsoft will choose to launch Cortana this year and which will be skipped for 2015 and beyond.