Example why Cortana is not outside USA

[colinkiama]

Maybe they are trying to convert the ios users in America to WP first. I don't think there's any other reason for it.

 

[mjrtoo]

In short MS should have been getting Bing up to scratch 12 months ago. They've been pulling this Regional crap for years and looking at the numbers it's not working out to well for them is it?

Bing learns, how can you learn anything to the service if it's not available yet.

 

[Markham Ranja]

No. Because I never was. Reread my post and you just might be able to grasp the difference between excusing and explaining.

I agree with much of what you said, but it doesn't explain anything. You are just venting and stating why you think your interests are more important than MS' financial concerns. That is fine, but I find it unhelpful in my endeavors to understand.

Let me break it down.

Your post hinged on the thesis that since MS makes ~$10 per WP device, they are not in a position to extend Bing services (and therefore Cortana and other features) from a purely financial viewpoint.

I countered with the thesis that making money from WP as such is irrelevant; accepted business practices of many major companies involve using large capital outlays generated from unrelated but highly profitable products to "bootstrap" other products. This is what Google does with many products. Adwords makes more than 95% of their revenue. All that money goes to fund Streetview or Maps or Gmail or whatever. It's not like Google makes a lot of money from each Android device sold. Or any money, for that matter, when you consider the Chinese phones or even the Nokia X.

Thus, MS should use the money coming from Office and Windows to fund Bing. Hell, I'm not even too concerned about WP. Bing, as you will know, extends beyond WP and powers a lot of the functionality in Windows 8 and Xbox as well. These are very profitable products. They don't even need to use that revenue, there's literally hundreds of billions available to work with.

Therefore, assuming that you understand my reasoning, your explanation is no longer probable (it may be possible).

If your explanation is true, MS is stupid and shortsighted, and the old MS intra-department infighting is alive and well too.

If my logic is correct, then MS is either unwilling to invest effort in Bing, or does not have the technical capabilities to do so.

Both are worrying possibilities. Hell, Bing started as MSN Search in 3Q 1998 (though they outsourced the actual search engine to Inktomi). For comparison, Google was started in 1998. MS' own search was launched on 2006. They've had more than seven years to fix these issues.

 

[Anant Anand]

I don't expect much from MS wrt Bing and Cortana... Even after 2 years of wp8 and 3-4 years of wp7 , MS failed (may be intentionally) to make bing fully functional UNIVERSAL... so I don't expect MS to give fully functional bing/cortana ever as soon there will be new hardware without bottom keys (new OEMs) ... So if you're outside USA, third key is dead for us

 

[neo158]

Maybe they are trying to convert the ios users in America to WP first. I don't think there's any other reason for it.

Or maybe beta testing with a smaller set of users first is the best thing to do!!!!

 

[John20212]

Calm down John. I could have invested more time and offered a better explanation, but you might also have put more effort into understanding (or asking a follow up question) before falling off your rocker. None of these are bogus excuses.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to money. The costs associated with each service varies from region to region, country to country. The things I mentioned are the primary reasons why that is so, although the exact details differ from service to service (likely excluding Cortana which I don't yet know enough about) .

For every region, MS must decide if the benefits of offering any particular service justifies the expenses. Due to the differing cost structures, MS doesn't always reach the same conclusion. That is why MS' services aren't universally available.

This doesn't at all explain why Apple has little difficulty rolling out their own services world wide, but it was never intended to. Most of that is easily explained by the financial realities. Apple pulls in almost $400 of pure profits per iOS device sold. MS nets less than $10 per WP device sold (now reduced to $0).

Really, I'm not trying to excuse anything. I find the situation extremely unsatisfying and WP will pay a price for it. I'm just explaining why things are the way they are.

Thanks for the reasoned calm response; I do tend voice my opinions rather strongly, but it's nothing personal, I've been told I come of rather bullish sometimes .
I do however still disagree with your opinion on this; and I really do hope MS fixes this if they really want to compete on the global stage with their 'devices and services'.

 

[Karthik Naik]

Your idea is right, but your a bit off the mark.

Cortana in terms of rollout, is going to be very similiar to Siri from what I can tell.

When Siri came to iPhones, it was rolled out to all countries, but I remember that Australia had very limited functionality with what it could do.

My best guess is, Microsoft doesn't want that. It wants the same experience across all regions and countries. So, they are rolling it out slowly with close to full functionality - hence the Beta in US.

totally agree with you!!
im from india and siri still doesnt understand our accents here
windows phone 8's voice command thingy which is brought up by pressing and holding the windows button on the other hand understands our accents perfectly
in india there are multiple accents(none sound like the stereotypical one as such ) but wp8 catches all when set on uk/us(except for a few words which are pronounced differently such as granite) but when set to English(India) its very very accurate
i feel cortana will have the same accuracy and will be a great working product unlike siri which at the end of the day(atleast for india) was a marketing gimmick
hopefully microsoft will get this right and will obviously need to master english(us and uk) before worldwide!

 

[a5cent]

Your post hinged on the thesis that since MS makes ~$10 per WP device, they are not in a position to extend Bing services (and therefore Cortana and other features) from a purely financial viewpoint.

No. You are still reading between the lines and imagining statements to exist that I never made. Nowhere did I say MS is financially not in a position to do so. I said it's a cost/benefit analysis that sways MS in one direction or another. It's not a question of "can" or "can't". It's a fuzzy question with fuzzy answers, involving estimates of what MS expects to gain in comparison to the money and time they expect to invest. Of course that is always weighed against the things that could be achieved by investing those resources elsewhere.

I will again stress that all this is in regard to MS' existing services, not Cortana. In regard to Cortana all I can say is that Bing is an issue, but I have no explanation as to why that couldn't be solved in time as to facilitate a more global Cortana role out.

I completely understand everything you are saying. Despite you probably believing otherwise, I actually agree with most of it (or even all, at least to a degree). Again. It's just not relevant to my point, because in contrast to you, I'm not trying to explain what MS should or should not be doing, or even if what they are doing makes sense or not.

 

[a5cent]

If it is about profit per region, then surely the US would be last on the list due to there being about 20 WP8 customers in total in that country? If they're hitting US first then they should just release Cortana on iOS and stop there. Doesn't add up as an explanation, sorry.

Out of the many countries that enjoy access to all of MS' services, the U.S. is consistently the first. Whatever the reason for that may be, it's irrelevant, because it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I'm discussing here. I may not be explaining things well (I wouldn't be surprised), but you are not understanding well either.

I'm not explaining why one country gets access to MS services before another country does. I'm explaining why some countries don't get access to some services at all, while others do. Those are two entirely different topics.

Finally, it's not about profits per region. That should be obvious, as profits don't exist for MS in the smartphone space. As I said above, it's about costs per region, weighed against the projected benefits. The part about "projected" benefits is important. The U.S. and China being the two largest smartphone markets, is likely reason enough to prioritize them over more successful WP markets, possibly also explaining why China will be one of the first countries after the U.S. where Cortana is received, despite being a country with almost zero WP market share.

 

[ven07]

This is only a rumour but I have heard that Microsoft are aiming to launch Cortana in Q2 this year in the UK and China.

Actually that rumor has been verified by wpcentral

 

[neo158]

Actually that rumor has been verified by wpcentral

Really, which article was it?

 

[colinkiama]

Well when you change the browser and search language to US, bing becomes useful and it won't affect the store.

 

[Foma Kiniaev]

Well when you change the browser and search language to US, bing becomes useful and it won't affect the store.

You cannot sell product expecting ppl worldwide doing this

 

[boovish]

Your idea is right, but your a bit off the mark.

Cortana in terms of rollout, is going to be very similiar to Siri from what I can tell.

When Siri came to iPhones, it was rolled out to all countries, but I remember that Australia had very limited functionality with what it could do.

My best guess is, Microsoft doesn't want that. It wants the same experience across all regions and countries. So, they are rolling it out slowly with close to full functionality - hence the Beta in US.

Australia always has problems with new tech. Their LTE is not completely functional

 

[Chris Sandiford]

Really, which article was it?

Joey Bravo said it in the 8.1 keynote speech.

 

[Jazmac]

Please stop being an MS apologist.

This is not some twopenny startup we are talking about. This is frakkin' Microsoft. They have enough money stashed in tax havens outside the USA to make Bing work properly across the entire world and not even notice the expense.

Every other major company uses revenue from just one or two major streams to finance other projects. These may never make a penny directly, but are important to the future of the company in some way.

Google uses ads to pay for Search, Android, Glass and self-driving cars. Amazon uses profit from e-commerce ops to finance things like the Kindle and delivery drones.

MS pulls in more than 70% profit on Office and Windows alone. If they are not pouring that profit into catching up with the competition, I can't help but feel they're still treating this whole mobile thing as a game.

They say many parts of the world may not see Cortana until 2015. When I read that I was like "What's Nadella smoking?!". I now predict that the legalisation of marijuana in Washington State (i.e. MS HQ) will herald the doom of MS.

Money is one of the primary reasons MS is slower to move in other countries. The company has to follow stricter guidelines than Apple or Samsung. MS was hit with a major fine by the EU and it won't take much for them to send in the dogs again. So they have to move slower and unfortunately for many outside the US, you have to wait on a longer approval process. That is fact.

 

[prasath1234]

Please leave Corttana.lets enjoy the great live tile os wp8

Sent from my C2305 using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[Markham Ranja]

Money is one of the primary reasons MS is slower to move in other countries. The company has to follow stricter guidelines than Apple or Samsung. MS was hit with a major fine by the EU and it won't take much for them to send in the dogs again. So they have to move slower and unfortunately for many outside the US, you have to wait on a longer approval process. That is fact.

Please provide a citation wherein it specifies exactly how a 7-year old case about browser bundling affects rollout of new features and services like Cortana on WP.

Also, note that WP doesn't enjoy any significant market share anywhere, much less a monopoly - therefore antitrust issues are not relevant at all. The EU does not and will not care what MS does in the mobile market until they enjoy a non-trivial marketshare.

Finally, adding "That is fact" to vacuous statements without providing statements doesn't make one look cool. In fact, when called out, one might end up looking rather foolish...

edit: Your post starts off with money being the reason why MS doesn't provide services on time (or at all) outside the USA and then jumps to talking about antitrust issues. Please explain this internal inconsistency as well.

 

[savagelizards]

No, it isn't. SD card slots on most operating systems introduce more problems than they solve, at least for the novice users. The only flagships on the market with an SD slot are the Galaxy S series. And they don't sell because of those, IMHO. (don't ask why they do sell, I have no idea).

They sell because the same phones are available on all carriers. A G4 is a G4 is a G4, regardless if you have Verizon or ATT or Sprint.

 

[Jazmac]

Please provide a citation wherein it specifies exactly how a 7-year old case about browser bundling affects rollout of new features and services like Cortana on WP.

Also, note that WP doesn't enjoy any significant market share anywhere, much less a monopoly - therefore antitrust issues are not relevant at all. The EU does not and will not care what MS does in the mobile market until they enjoy a non-trivial marketshare.

Finally, adding "That is fact" to vacuous statements without providing statements doesn't make one look cool. In fact, when called out, one might end up looking rather foolish...

edit: Your post starts off with money being the reason why MS doesn't provide services on time (or at all) outside the USA and then jumps to talking about antitrust issues. Please explain this internal inconsistency as well.

Pump your brakes Longshanks, its not about looking cool. I'm not one of those kids you xbox with. Let me try to break down my language to you. It costs MONEY to litigate a case. It costs MS money when the EU tells MS you better watch your tacos when you do business over here otherwise, we are taking you back to court. Just because a case is 7 years old son, has no bearing on the letter of the law. At least not in the EU it doesn't. They wanted to NAIL MS to the cross because of an accidental, (at least MS called it accidental) disregard of giving Windows users a browser choice when Windows 8 dropped. This is why MS takes its time in some countries than others. It costs them real money. I don't know if it is any clearer to you based on your point of reference, but from my read of history and this case, there isn't any other conclusion to draw from it.