Stefan Mileschin

Standalone mobile apps shut down

Software King of the World Microsoft is planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps as it refocuses on business users.

Microsoft is following through with that plan, announcing that it will shut down the current Cortana iOS and Android apps, end Cortana support for the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and remove the original Cortana functionality from the first-generation Surface Headphones starting in 2021.

These changes are still a few months away, but it marks another big step for Microsoft in pivoting Cortana away from a Google Assistant or Alexa alternative to a more specialized, productivity-focused assistant -- changes the company has already started making on the Windows 10 version of Cortana earlier this year.

Vole put a 7 September date on the already-announced sunsetting of third-party Cortana skills for Windows. Instead, it will be focusing on its productivity features that repurpose Cortana as a part of the Microsoft 365 suite of software, citing the revamped Windows 10 functions and integrated Cortana features in the Outlook and Teams apps as replacements.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/512...-to-scrap-yard