Cortana is a growing part of Windows, but very geographically limitid... Will it change?

[secher]

Cortana on the PC, Cortana in the browser, Cortana in the pocket, on the tablet, and probably also XBOX...

Microsoft is making Cortana available on all devices, but not everywhere... I live in Denmark, a country that is not likely to ever get Cortana support. Of course I can change my region to US or some other place with Cortana, but that will ruin day to day searches for me, because it gives me results that are irrelevant. If I search for my university ("SDU") it will bring up some random american companies. If the region on my phone is Denmark, I will of course get the right results.

Now, to make it clear, I don't need Cortana in danish, I speak english just fine - as do most smaller countries that are not likely to get Cortana in their language. What we want is the functionality of Cortana in our area - not in our language.

Cortana is going to be such a huge part of Windows 10, and thats awesome, but most people won't be able to use it!

Will Windows 10 even work without Cortana? What will be our choices? Is Cortana coming to more countries? More languages?

Microsoft needs to make it clear, in my opinion...

 

[matejm1994]

Yes, that would be nice to have cortana in owr own region without changing it to US for example. There should be option to chose language (those from supported), but it should work regardless region.

 

[dysje]

Microsoft has been known to be slow, very slow in supporting non-domestic markets (anything outside of the USA really). Sooo... yes, Cortana will come, when? Well... Seeing as how Microsoft goes about the rest of the planet, it could take a seriously long time.

Which is even more annoying as it's currently 90% Europe that drive the Lumia sales.

 

[DER1996]

It's true that like most american companies , MS is infamous for lack of support outside of US ,BUT they have been emphasisng that they're trying to get Cortana to as much countries as possible , and I remember that they promised a worldwide availability sometime in 2015 , the addition of multiple language support in cortana is a good sign . Even if I'm wrong about the last part , all their efforts would be meaningless since most lumia sales are out side of the US . Still I wouldn't be suprised if it's a bit late to come to smalleer countries , localization takes a lot of time effort and money , and unlike google, MS has the bad habbit of throwing money only in direct profit projects , which explains their treatment of WP as ******* child for most of its' life and why I'm an optimist as far as W10 is concerned.

 

[Wevenhuis]

Cortana will not change for Europe, at least for another 10-15 years I think.

I think Cortana is only for the America's, UK, Australia and India. The rest of the world does not register on the Cortana radar.

Ever since windows phone 7 I've been giving microsoft feedback that for speech to be sometihng, step one is working on the non-english languages packs. Except for Chinese, I've no progress for other countries. I think for Europe we will only see aftermarket solutions, because non-English speaking Europe is not a big market enough to invest technology on that.
That's the impression I'm getting from microsoft. And its odd, because they have a huge database of windows OS language packs, even ink-to-text-recognitin packs. But speech is thousands of miles behind any other package I think. If the foundation isn't there, then I don't see the point and value of Cortana. I can then only conclude currently that its hyped.

I probably don't speak for everyone, but when it comes to winodws 10 I think its better to focus on other aspects of the operating system than Cortana, but our feedback won't lead to any significant change for Europeans. I think its better to focus on other OS elements such as the desktop experience, certainly the tablet experience (a lot of work and feedback needed there that can make a significant change), Office apps, photo's app and overall performance, batterylife and stability.

You have a point if cortana search will work for Europe. I will boldly say no. It is important to give feedback on the general search experience. That's an experience that will matter to us.

 

[Harrie-S]

Small correction.
In below countries Cortana is available.
United States
United Kingdom
Australia
India

Canada
China

Germany
France
Italy
Spain

 

[Wevenhuis]

Small correction.
In below countries Cortana is available.
United States
United Kingdom
Australia
India

Canada
China

Germany
France
Italy
Spain

....But also in their respective languages?

 

[Harrie-S]

....But also in their respective languages?

Yes but you need Cyan+ pfd or Denim
And in China she's called Xiao Na

See also http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...vailable/1b94c48b-20a4-483f-8aee-3fde582aecd4

 

[JamesDax]

Yes. This has been said a thousand times.

 

[anon(8150199)]

....But also in their respective languages?

You need to set the language and region to that specific country - Germany for German, France for French etc. You also need to set the language for voice control (it'll download if it's not installed).

 

[Wevenhuis]

I don't see the Netherlands- I don't see support for Dutch.

 

[Harrie-S]

I don't see the Netherlands- I don't see support for Dutch.

Indeed, there are still a lot of country's missing and it probably will take (a lot of) time before they are added. Or better said will they ever be added.
But with Germany, France, UK, Italy and .Spain more than half of Europe is "covered".

 

[colinkiama]

Indeed, there are still a lot of country's missing and it probably will take (a lot of) time before they are added. Or better said will they ever be added.
But with Germany, France, UK, Italy and .Spain more than half of Europe is "covered".

Funny. I thought Europe had 28 countries

 

[TechFreak1]

I guess the conundrum for MS is: do you have Cortana speak in english or the native tongue to a country?

They could roll out Cortana out in english and then add support for the native tongue as the speech has to be recorded / synthesized. The downside of this approach is that it doubles the workload as I imagine some people wouldn't want Cortana speaking in a foreign accent (to them) in this case "with an american accent". Never the less there are quite a lot of people outside of the US who would prefer Cortana speaking with an american accent (Jen Taylor's voice).

 

[Praxius]

If they drop trying to get other voice actors for different English accents, things would go faster.. A bit.

 

[colinkiama]

I don't see the Netherlands- I don't see support for Dutch.

When support for Dutch comes, you'll love it. Microsoft doesn't want to release a half-assed, incomplete Cortana. They want a functional one for every country. That's why Cortana isn't in the Netherlands. Just remember that at this point, Siri was only available in the US, UK, Germany, France, Austrailia and Japan. Cortana is already in 9 countries.

 

[a5cent]

Just remember that at this point, Siri was only available in the US. And UK. Cortana is already in 9 countries.

At least according to Wikipedia (source), Siri was rolled out to many countries, including Germany, France and the UK, on day one! I didn't live in any of those countries at the time, nor did I own an iPhone, so I'm just trusting Wikipedia on this one.

One year later even little Switzerland had Apple's Siri. For Cortana we're coming up on that one year mark now...

 

[colinkiama]

At least according to Wikipedia (source), Siri was rolled out to many countries, including Germany, France and the UK, on day one! I didn't live in any of those countries at the time, nor did I own an iPhone, so I'm just trusting Wikipedia on this one.

One year later even little Switzerland had Apple's Siri. For Cortana we're coming up on that one year mark now...

And around that one year mark, windows 10 is nearby which probably means more language support for Cortana. And even though she was released in 7 countries, (at this point in time), siri could only use location features in the US, so stuff like searching for local businesses, directions in maps etc were not available in other countries. Yet the countries Cortana have been released for all have the location reminder feature that google now stole. And the features siri was missing. Obviously in alpha countries, certain things like directions by transit are missing but you are still able to use the maps feature with other ways of transport.

 

[anon(8150199)]

My Italian ain't that great right now (in fact I'm just learning it for less than a month!), but I gotta say Italian Cortana just ain't close to the English one.

Edit: The German one is even worse.

 

[a5cent]

And around that one year mark, windows 10 is nearby which probably means more language support for Cortana.

We don't need more language support. We just need Cortana to be available on anyone's device that uses one of the supported languages.
Anyway, lets check back in two months. I'll be happily surprised if Cortana's rollout is anywhere near where Siri's was at that point.