Windows Phone 8.1 Won’t Bring Cortana Immediately For Asia Pacific Region

Yesterday Microsoft made some big announcements. It finally unveiled Windows Phone 8.1, a major update for its mobile platform. The update will bring a much rumored feature. Microsoft’s very own Siri and Google Now rival that it calls Cortana. Windows Phone 8.1 will be released to all existing WP8 devices this summer, globally. Though users in the Asia Pacific region won’t be in luck as far as Cortana is concerned. The update won’t come with the digital assistant in that particular region at first.

Users in other major markets, such as the U.S., will get Cortana from the get go. This isn’t too surprising when you come to think of it. Even when Apple launched Siri for the first time most of its features were U.S.-specific, so regardless of the fact that users in other regions could still use Siri, the feature set took some time to trickle down.

Then there’s also the problem of working out all the kinks. Not everyone in the Asia Pacific region is a native English speaker. The company has to tweak Cortana’s algorithms to make it better at understanding various accents, which would definitely take time. No word as yet when Cortana will finally be available for Asia Pacific users, though the impatient bunch would still be able to get its hands on Cortana by simply setting their region to the U.S.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Cortana, Microsoft, windows phone 8.1