14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently announced that the consumer versions of Cortana would just be pulled, including the applications that are aimed at iPhone and Android.
Both would be pulled in 2021, Microsoft says, along with the Harman Kardon Invoke Cortana support. In other words, the smart Bluetooth speaker will become just a typical speaker, with Microsoft offering a $50 gift card to customers who purchased the Invoke.
Harman Kardon customers will receive a new firmware update next year to remove Cortana support.
“To make sure you can keep listening to music or your favorite podcasts, we’ve worked closely with Harman Kardon to create a Bluetooth-enabled device transition plan that we hope will help ease the impact of this change,” the company explains
The digital assistant will also stop working on the first-generation Surface Headphones, and this time Microsoft is offering a $25 gift card to affected customers in the US.
Enterprise focus
Microsoft has already started working on the enterprise focus of Cortana in Windows 10, and the company says that the third-party skills of the assistant would be pulled this year.
“The first change is to end support for all third-party Cortana skills on September 7. Then, in early 2021, we’ll stop supporting the Cortana app for mobile (iOS and Android), because you can now manage your calendar and email, join meetings, and do so much more via our new productivity-focused experiences — like the Cortana Windows 10 experience, Cortana integration in Outlook mobile, and soon Cortana voice assistance in the Teams mobile app,” Microsoft says.
This decision to abandon the consumer side of Cortana isn’t necessarily surprising, as the digital assistant has never become the Google Assistant or Siri rival that Microsoft hoped it to be. Focusing on enterprises, on the other hand, is something that perfectly aligns with the company’s long-term strategy going forward, not just for Cortana but for all the other products in its lineup.