Last week at Microsoft talked about bringing Cortana to hardware devices which could be used to power a Microsoft Home Hub / Smart home solution and today they have announced a Cortana Device SDK for hardware manufactures. This means that Cortana will be available on Xbox, Windows 10 PCs, Windows 10 Mobile and with the Creators Update Windows 10 IoT devices. Device manufactures will be able to build Cortana into their devices which will bring voice control so we could see potential Amazon Echo rivals powered by Microsoft’s Cortana.

Microsoft shows us a glimpse of what these devices with a short video preview of a Harman Kardon Cortana powered speaker coming in 2017. It looks like you will be able to use Cortana control music playback on the speaker and hopefully other functions like home automation and access to digital services.

Device manufactures can apply to Microsoft to get the SDK, hopefully we will be a range of Cortana powered devices and new integrated services in 2017.

More details on the SDK at Microsoft.com and here is the video:

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