A full-fledged version of Cortana is coming to India. Microsoft announced on Monday that it plans to bring the digital voice assistant to India, as well as Japan, Canada, and Australia in the coming months. As part of the expansion, Cortana will also become available in Brazil and Mexico later this year.
Announced as a flagship feature of Windows Phone 8.1 last year,
Cortana is Microsoft's take on Apple's
Siri, and Google's
Google Now assistants. The voice assistant has been lauded with praises from users and critics alike; however, its limited availability has kept users in queue for long.
Microsoft says it is taking its time to get the local dialects, idioms and speech patterns right before making it available in different regions. "In each market, we focus in on certain key attributes that help us find the right voice talent for Cortana,"
says Marcus Ash, head of Cortana team at Microsoft.
Despite being initially launched only in the US and UK, India has always been one of Cortana's largest consumer base. Last year, plenty of users enabled Cortana in the country via a workaround. Overwhelmed by the requests and attention, the company launched an alpha version of Cortana in India last year. The version; however, didn't come equipped with all the feature.