Those with beady eye on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website have spotted that Sonos may have something new in the works.
Not content with its domination of the connected speaker market – solidified with its recent collaboration with Amazon, Sonos wants to expand its products for the home cinema industry with a dedicated speaker with a HDMI port.
Described as “high-performance all-in-one home theatre smart speaker and part of Sonos' home sound system,” the speaker would be the first from Sonos to feature such support if the filing becomes reality and the ‘S14’ speaker (rather than an optical output).
Of course it has released three products for the home cinema market to date (the Playbar, Playbase and the Sub), but it’s as yet unclear where the S14 will sit in the market. If the HDMI port paves the way for 2.1 support for enjoying Dolby Atmos and DTS, it could potentially be one of the most significant launches to date for the consumer powerhouse.
Unfortunately the finer details on the S14 and its possible performance are currently sparse, as soon as the document was picked up by Variety magazine the FCC removed a significant amount of information on the product. It is expected, however, that the speaker will pack in far-field microphones for voice control, and support for Alexa and potentially Google Home too.
Sonos has publically come out to say very little on the matter, and clearly wants finer details to remain hush-hush until the product’s actual launch. No images of the S14 were published with the document.
Source: Variety
UPDATE: Sonos has since announced that it will be hosting a special event on June 6, 2018 in San Francisco which looks like it could potentially be the product reveal.