| Tencent Technology News In the era of mobile Internet and Internet of Things, voice assistant technology has become increasingly important and popular. For example, Amazon's Alexa has been opened to third-party hardware, which means that external devices can also use Alexa to control. |
On Tuesday, Microsoft also made a similar announcement: to open its own voice assistant Cortana (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaona") to the outside world, and Xiaona will play a role in more occasions.
According to the US technology news website CNET, in the voice assistant market, there are currently four companies competing, namely Google (Weibo) Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa, which came from behind.
Unlike the three rivals with smartphones, Amazon Alexa has taken the lead in third-party openness. In addition to its own smart speaker Echo, Alexa has been used by a large number of third-party hardware. For example, users can control electric curtains by speaking.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it will provide relevant development kits (New Devices SDK) for external device manufacturers, so that they can implant Cortana. For example, external manufacturer Harmon Kardon will launch Cortana-based smart speaker products next year (Microsoft has not yet imitated Echo to launch hardware).
For Windows 10 computer users, Cortana’s name may be familiar, but in the era of smartphones, Microsoft’s Lumia and Windows 10 Mobile have suffered failures, which limits the scope of Cortana’s use. Prior to this, Microsoft had announced that it would port Cortana to IoT devices equipped with the Windows 10 IoT operating system.
Foreign media pointed out that due to poor performance in the smartphone market, Microsoft Cortana needs to demonstrate its powerful voice recognition and information processing capabilities to consumers through some relatively successful home hardware devices.
Before opening up to third parties, all Microsoft did was to increase Cortana's penetration rate in its own operating system and hardware. For example, this summer, Cortana was implanted into Microsoft's game console Xbox One.
It is particularly worth noting that in the past Cortana was often implanted with some hardware (computers, mobile phones) with display screens. With the opening to the outside world, more IoT devices without display screens will also be controlled by Cortana.
The opening of voice assistants to the outside world has become an industry trend. Just in December, Google also announced that it will open "Google Assistant" to third-party software developers. For example, after-sales service chatbots developed by external manufacturers can use Google Assistant's technology to start dialogues and services with consumers.
In addition, in the latest version of the iOS10 operating system this year, Apple’s Siri has also begun to gradually open to external software, such as the Internet telephony tool Skype developed by Microsoft, which can be controlled by Siri.
Some analysts pointed out that voice assistants are becoming a "quasi-operating system" in the era of the mobile Internet and the Internet of Things. It can be applied to various occasions such as computers, mobile phones, and Internet of Things hardware, and establish cooperative relationships with third-party developers. Manufacturers such as Apple, Google, and Amazon are currently doing everything possible to expand the coverage of voice assistants and occupy a dominant position.
The original address of this article: Microsoft Cortana is open to third parties: Cortana will be able to control your home appliances | "This is how you should learn Linux" Author: Zheng Shuai, Auditor: Pang Zengbao