Cyanogen to integrate Cortana into Android

Kirt McMaster, co-founder and CEO of Cyanogen Inc., a leading mobile operating system pure-play, has suggested that the company is working to deeply integrate Cortana into the next version of Cyanogen OS, International Business Times reports.

For the uninitiated, Cyanogen, based on Android, offers an alternative operating system for Smartphones. It is backed by big names in the business including Andreessen Horowitz, Tencent, Qualcomm, Foxconn, Telefonica and Microsoft Corp. It raised $80 million in Series C funding earlier this year.

Speaking to IBTimes, McMaster revealed the company’s plan to incorporate Cortana, the personal assistant for Windows 10, into the next version of Cyanogen OS. This will help Cyanogen to firm its footing into the mass market.

“Cortana is currently available as an app on Android, but in order for it to make a real difference, it needs to be able to be integrated at the OS level so that its full potential can be leveraged”, he said. “Natural language coupled with intelligence is very important but as an application it doesn’t rally work because you need to be embedded into the framework of the OS because that is where you get all the signal from the services that makes that intelligence smarter”.

McMaster did not reveal any specific details about when or how it would work but gave an example on how it could be better than Apple’s Siri:

“When Apple launched Apple Music at WWDC, they showed the Siri integration with Apple Music. Siri doesn’t power Spotify like that so we can do these kind of things with for example, integration of Microsoft’s Cortana into the OS enabling natural language to power Spotify and other services.”