(Image Credit: zlatanpedro)

Microsoft plans to partner with Taiwanese partners to launch their connected car platform. Samuel Shen, Chief Operating Officer at the Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group, revealed the company has created a prototype car powered by the Cortana virtual assistant. 

During his opening keynote speech at the TechDays Taiwan developer conference, Shen discussed cost being a previous barrier: “We have not launched similar products due to the high cost, but we hope to have further discussions with Taiwanese partners to jointly explore future possibilities.”

Microsoft is teaming-up with the Taiwan unit of German carmaker BMW and Kingwaytek Technology

The current prototype handles natural voice input through Cortana for all the controls you would expect such as navigation and music control, or for making use of particular app functions such as making restaurant bookings. Relevant information from the commands will be displayed in a non-distracting way on the integrated windscreen to prevent taking your eyes away from the road like current iterations of Android Auto and CarPlay. 

Microsoft's previous concept vehicle – shown last year – was similar to Google and Apple's respective connected car platforms in that it acts as an extension of your mobile device with information displayed on the in-dash display. With so few Windows-powered mobile devices being used, Microsoft will have to ensure full-compatibility with Android and iOS which their software has made great strides towards in recent months.

(Image: Windows in the Car from April 2014)

For the current project, Microsoft is teaming-up with the Taiwan unit of German carmaker BMW and Kingwaytek Technology, a Taiwan-based provider of digital maps, to pre-install required car software and devices when the car is manufactured. The current trend in Taiwan is towards adding connected car software and devices post-manufacture, so it will be an interesting project to watch. 

This year's TechDays event in Taipei covered the full spectrum of Microsoft's technology development, with sessions about the intelligent cloud platform, the Internet of Things suite with Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, Windows servers and the commercial applications of the Windows 10 operating system. The event attracted over 3,000 IT professionals from nearly 1,000 companies. 

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