Earlier today we revealed that Cortana is getting outlook integration for Invoke speakers that allows users to ask Cortana to speak out the unread mails from the outlook app. It is now revealed that Cortana on Invoke speakers can respond to your voice buy simply saying “Cortana”. “Hey Cortana” has been set by Microsoft for invoking Cortana on any device on where it is supported.
Even though this is small but a significant improvement as Cortana will now be able to differentiate between whether any command has been given to Invoke speaker or any other Windows 10 device which is placed near the invoke speakers. In the recent times Cortana has got various integrations like the IFTTT integration, outlook integration and the upcoming Amazon Alexa integration on Windows 10.
Although when Microsoft informed about Alexa integration many of us feared about the future of Cortana. Microsoft is actually nowhere in the smart speakers battle of which is dominated by the Amazon Echo and Google Home. And in terms of number of commands supported by Cortana it is also lacking behind Amazon Alexa which has a huge catalog of commands.
Microsoft unveiled the Harman Kardon invoke speakers last year in October and since then it has got many features. At that time Microsoft also informed about more such speakers coming in 2018. We will have to wait for that moment when it comes but we are not getting any information about these speakers. Microsoft not having a mobile platform now is definitely hurting them but their slow response to trends is also a reason why Microsoft is going away from the consumers.
We hope the upcoming Andromeda device will help Microsoft to boost the UWP apps vision and thereby helping Windows 10 growth and all the related services of Windows.
