Microsoft unveils new phone software Cortana to rival Apple’s Siri

Cortana lets users customize their phones’ lock screen, offers new choices for tweaking start screen

Microsoft corporate vice-president Joe Belfiore demonstrates the new Cortana personal assistant during the keynote address of the Build Conference on Wednesday in San Francisco. Photo: AP

Seattle: Microsoft Corp. is adding a voice-controlled digital assistant called Cortana to its Windows Phone software, seeking to match a feature that’s already available in Apple Inc. and Google Inc. smartphones.

“Microsoft today showed off the feature along with new Windows Phone 8.1 software. The new programme also has an action centre, which is a pull-down menu that gives people access to basic functions regardless of which programme they already have open,” said vice-president Joe Belfiore, at a company conference in San Francisco for developers.

Chief executive officer (CEO) Satya Nadella, appointed to lead the world’s largest software maker in February, unveiled Microsoft’s Office software for Apple’s iPads last week. At this week’s conference, called Build, he’s turning his attention to showing Windows developers tools and tactics to boost Microsoft’s single-digit share in phones and tablets, as well as providing money-making opportunities in a contracting personal-computer market.

“Reinvigorating the Windows franchise continues to be a key ingredient in Microsoft’s recipe for success as it looks to offset headwinds from the secular challenges in the PC market,” Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets & Co., wrote in a note.

Delicate Balance

The contrast between Microsoft’s willingness to offer its wares for non-Windows devices and the Build conference for programmers of Windows-based systems underscores how Nadella must strike a balance between supporting an ailing Windows franchise and embracing rival platforms. The CEO is seeking to ensure key products like Office and cloud services can have the widest possible distribution and don’t get locked out as Windows alternatives dominate the device market.

The new Windows Phone software also lets users customize their phone’s lock screen and offers new choices for tweaking the start screen.

Cortana, which fully replaces the search function on Windows Phone, according to Belfiore, is named for the artificial-intelligence character in Microsoft’s best-selling Halo Xbox video-game series.

Windows stands to be the fastest-growing smartphone operating system over the next four years with 30% annual growth, according to a 26 February report by researcher IDC. Even at that rate, Windows Phone would only make up 7% of the total market in 2018, compared with Google’s Android software at 76% Apple’s iOS at 14%.

In tablets, Windows had 3.4% share in 2013, IDC said. For Microsoft’s Surface tablet, the share was 1%.

PC Decline

Global computer shipments fell a record 10% last year and are forecast to continue to decline this year as tablets and smartphones lure consumers away from traditional desktop and notebook designs, according to IDC. Tablet sales volume—dominated by Apple and Google, whose operating systems account for 95% of that market—will rise an average 16% annually through to 2017.

One possible boon to Windows developers: Microsoft is working on obtaining tools, via acquisition or development, to make it easier for application developers to target multiple operating systems without having to rewrite software. The Redmond, Washington-based company is considering an acquisition or investment in Xamarin Inc., or other companies that enable mobile apps to run on different devices, people with knowledge of the matter said last month. Or Microsoft might build those capabilities itself, one of the people said.

Nadella, in his first public speech since taking over as CEO, said last week that he’ll hold nothing back to get the company’s programs across all devices, in a clear departure from the software maker’s longtime focus on its Windows operating system.

While Nadella has emphasized that Microsoft will focus on devices and web-based cloud services, he has also made clear that Windows remains a massive agenda for us and the company plans to innovate with the operating system. Bloomberg

nagesh dubey