Microsoft's Cortana is currently limited to only those in the United States, but the team behind the personal assistant are working hard to quickly bring it to other regions. Top on that list is the UK and China, two regions that are officially getting Cortana soon. Cortana was originally teased as coming in July, but Microsoft later backtracked on that as the date was pushed back.
Now, Marcus Ash, Group Program Manager of Cortana, has responded to a user's question about the UK, noting "Barring an unforeseen issue, down to less than 2 weeks for the developer preview." This is certainly good news, as many in the UK can finally take advantage of a proper regionalized Cortana, including metric and Celsius data. As to the reason for the delay, Ash explains that he and his team have "…learned a lot about scaling. Now we need to finish" observing that it has been a "tough project".
Likewise, a user in our forums named Talderon, who also works for Microsoft, asserts that China is following the UK soon thereafter:
"Last week, Cortana UK and China went from Dev support to Live Site support which means we are nearing release…UK for sure, China may be delayed a week or so later, but we're all pushing hard to get this out the door!!!"
Indeed just over one week ago, Cortana was caught speaking Chinese. Talderon has previously revealed some specific changes to Cortana that later came to be in the biweekly updates to the service. Additionally, according to Talderon "India is still being worked on, but it will be sooner than later. No guess on a date yet."
Clearly Microsoft is focused on getting Bing services updated around the world, as Bing powers Cortana. As a result, we should be seeing more regionalization of Cortana in the coming months, but for now, the UK goes first.
Source: @MarcusAsh, WPCentral Forums; Thanks, Paul D., for the tip!
