The $200 smart speaker that became a $200 Bluetooth speaker
Cortana support ended on the Harman Kardon Invoke, gutting the device
The market's verdict: +6.1% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
On July 31, 2020, Microsoft announced Cortana would leave the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker in January 2021, converting a $200 smart speaker into a plain Bluetooth one, and that the Cortana mobile apps would die the following March. Owners were offered a $50 Microsoft gift card as thanks for their participation in the smart home experiment. The firmware update later made things worse before it made them quiet. The assistant that outlived this hardware by three years is now also dead, which at least makes it a matched set.
This one is well documented.
They did it more than once
The speaker died first. The phones followed within the year.
Links
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Impact
- Windows Central (publication)
↳ caused by Cortana device deprecations (July 2020)
Timeline
- Jul 31, 2020 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.