Microsoft Playing The Long Game In The Digital Assistant Market

As far as digital assistants are concerned, Amazon was considered to be somewhat late to the game and entering into a market where companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google had long established their own digital assistants, but yet Amazon managed to fight their way to the top with Alexa and spawned a series of smart speakers.

This also resulted in other companies such as Google and Apple following suit, but what about Microsoft’s Cortana? Despite Alexa and Google Assistant featured so prominently during CES, Microsoft doesn’t seem too worried and seems to be playing the long game. Speaking to GeekWire, Andrew Shuman, corporate vice president of Cortana engineering said that Microsoft is in it for the long haul.

Shuman was quoted as saying, “It’s a long journey to making a real assistant that you can communicate with over a longer period of time to really be approachable and interesting and better than the alternative. That is our journey, to make some make some great experiences that shine through, and recognize that long haul.”

Microsoft has attempted to make their own smart speaker, as we have seen in the Harman Kardon Invoke which comes with Cortana built inside of it, but unfortunately it didn’t quite gain the same momentum that we saw with the Echo series of speakers or Google Home. In fact Apple is expected to launch their Siri-powered HomePod later this year, but even then some are saying that Apple is in for a pretty tough fight as well.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Audio, Gadgets
Tags: Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, Microsoft, Siri