Windows Phone 8.1's Cortana Will Not Be Available in APAC at Launch
Windows Phone 8.1's Cortana digital personal assistant will launch shortly in the U.S. as a 'beta', and then in the U.S., the U.K., and China in the second half of 2014. For us in Asia Pacific, we've to wait till 2015.
Earlier today at Build, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8.1 (and for Nokia, three devices), a major Windows Phone OS release. Unfortunately, we've gotten news that its headline feature, the digital personal assistant named Cortana, will not be available in the Asia Pacific region when the OS launches. It is expected to arrive here only in 2015.
Another feature, Wi-Fi Sense (that automatically connects you to free public hotspots it finds to help you save cellular data), will also not be available in several countries in this region, including Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore (insert another sad face), Taiwan, and Thailand.
And for the Swype-like Word Flow Keyboard, it will launch in 16 languages/markets, including English (India), English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Hindi (Latin), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Finnish, French (France), German, Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Italian, Turkish, and Dutch (Netherlands).
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