- Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) wants its Cortana voice assistant to complement existing smart speakers like Amazon's Echo rather than compete with the products.
- CEO Satya Nadella, in an interview with journalists this week: “We are very mindful of the categories we enter where we can do something unique. A good one is speakers. To me the challenge is, exactly what would we be able to do in that category that is going to be unique?”
- CTO Kevin Scott says Cortana can find success without a smart speaker, instead focusing on playing a larger role in Microsoft products like Office software.
- Scott, to VentureBeat: “On the smart speaker side of things, we’ve got a bunch of partners who are building Cortana-powered things right now and we’re super excited about all of those, but it’s not like we’re going to have a single Microsoft-branded Cortana smart speaker that’s going to be the thing that carries Cortana to customers."