Arguably one of the chief feature in Windows Phone 8.1, the voice assistant service Cortana is heading over to India soon. The Group Program Manager for Cortana on Windows Phone team, Marcus Ash, mentioned the surge in usage of the US English version of the operating system — a sign that many people are using workarounds to get Cortana on their phone — as a result of which, the company has decided to speed up on pushing the Indian version of Cortana.
The voice assistant wasn’t supposed to arrive in India until 2015, but quite a lot of people have used the workaround on Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview to get Cortana on their devices. Microsoft saw the surge in usage of the US English version of the operating system in India, and realized that Cortana was quite popular in the country.
@giri7627 Based on usage of the US English version in India from Cortana developer preview users, we started working on it now.
— Marcus Ash (@marcusash) June 17, 2014
We heard that Cortana will be arriving in Canada very soon. However, since Microsoft has just begun working on the Indian version of Cortana, it doesn’t seem like the voice assistant will be a part of the operating system when it arrives in the country. Those of us in India might have to wait just a little bit longer.
Further reading: Cortana, India, Windows Phone
