Thus far, Sonos has been pretty cosy with Amazon when it comes to bringing voice control to its speaker range, but that could have all changed by the close of 2018.
Sonos has always maintained that support for other voice assistants was in its sights – CEO Patrick Spence even teased us by saying integration with Google was imminent after the release of Sonos One in October 2017 – but now it’s finally getting serious about it (…we hope).
Google’s voice control is coming later this year following on from the much-hyped launch of the Alexa-activated Sonos One speaker and recently release of the Sonos Beam soundbar.
On a potential end of 2018 release (/timely Christmas present for Google Assistant users), Spence told The Verge “we’re working as hard as we can, and so is Google, to get it ready for that time.”
These fully Google-integrated Sonos speakers will sit in the company’s current price range, as it maintains it can offer a higher audio quality over offerings on the market directly from the likes of Amazon and Google.
Sonos also says it is weighing partnership with companies such as Tencent or Baidu to introduce Chinese-language voice assistant to its speakers.
Sonos just went public on Nasdaq (rising from $15 a share to sit and just under $20, resulting in a valuation of approximately $2 billion for the company), which should no doubt lead the way for the company ramping up its R&D and product output in the coming years.