Microsoft & Amazon Partner to bring Cortana Skills to Alexa and vice-versa
Amazon has done some brilliant job with Alexa voice assistant, especially when it comes to skills. While Microsoft’s Harman Speakers are still to be seen nowhere, Amazon and Microsoft have worked together to extend the abilities of both the assistant to work together. In short, Cortana Skills are now available on Alexa as well. This is a rare partnership between Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Satya Nadella of Microsoft.This is great news for Cortana lovers who use it on their digital devices including Tablets, Laptops and the remaining Windows 10 Mobile devices, and not to forget Xbox. Like I mentioned, that this partnership is two ways. You will be able to Invoke Alexa using Cortana or the other way round by the end of the year.
Microsoft has been pushing big time for AI, and Amazon has worked brilliantly on Alexa. Every assistant has their own advantage, and for techies, if they all can talk to each other, there is nothing that beats it. In an interview, Amazon’s Bezos remarked that Cortana has native integration with Outlook, and Office Suite.
Alexa users can get this done without buying a dedicated speaker which runs Cortana. Amazon’s Alexa speakers now account for 70% market share with their Eco devices.
That said the next step which Amazon now expect is get Google on board for the same thing. While there is 145 million Cortana user, based on Windows 10 installation, Google’s Assitant has major share market for smartphones. If every digital assistant can talk to each other, it will be a huge win for the consumers, and nobody will have to depend on one type of hardware.
