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Sonos

March 15, 2019

Ikea to Unveil Sonos-Powered Speaker in April

Ikea is set to unveil its new line of speakers it has been developing with Sonos at the Milan Furniture Fair next month. Yesterday, the Swedish furniture company officially announced it will be showing off the Symfonisk speakers and released a teaser video highlighting the kitchen as a use case for them.

Ikea Sonos teaser

The video is artful in the way it gives away nothing, showing only a kitchen and a living room with blurred out spots, but Janko Roettgers over at Variety had a few observations:

The positioning and size of those masked spots suggests that the company may be getting ready to introduce at least two speakers with distinct form factors: A speaker shelf that would fit on a kitchen wall, and a standalone speaker that one might place on an end table.

Which adds up considering that Ikea and Sonos had already debuted a prototype of a connected, multi-function book-shelf speaker last year.

What isn’t spelled out specifically in this press release is whether the Ikea speaker will have Alexa built in, like the Sonos One and Beam. The Verge reported back in January that Symfonisk will integrate with Ikea’s Trådfri line of smart lights, shades and more.

If the Symfonisk winds up being smart speaker that doubles as an actual, useful shelf, that’s a good space saving idea, especially in countries where kitchen spaces are typically on the smaller side. With its massive global presence and brand recognition, Ikea could certainly move units. But I wonder if it’s too late for Ikea to breakthrough with such a product here in the U.S., at least for the kitchen.

Voice control is great in the kitchen, where hands are often covered in dough or sauce or other foodstuffs, but hardware makers have moved on to fight over becoming the smart screen in your kitchen. Smart screens do everything smart speakers do, plus show your calendar, act as a digital picture frame and provide enhanced guided cooking with video.

That doesn’t mean the speaker/shelf won’t work in other scenarios in the house. In fact, it won’t be long until smart assistants become ubiquitous in our homes, as smart speakers get cheaper and baked directly into more products. We’ll have to wait until April to see what Ikea finally unveils, and whether it will find a place in our kitchen or not.

October 4, 2017

Sonos gets Alexa (and soon Google and Siri)

If you’re like me, Amazon’s Echo plays a central role in your kitchen. Player of music, answerer of questions, setter of timers, forecaster of weather. The Echo is super convenient, but the sound quality is definitely lacking.

Since it was announced last year, I’ve eagerly anticipated the marriage of Alexa’s voice control with the room-filling sound of Sonos Play speakers. Today, Sonos announced that Alexa integration is finally here, along with a new Sonos One speaker with Alexa built in — as well as forthcoming Google Assistant and Siri support.

For existing Sonos and Alexa owners, the Amazon connected assistant is available via a Sonos app beta update available today. With it, you’ll be able to control your Sonos speakers with your voice via the Echo and Echo Dot.

With the Sonos One (available October 24), Sonos is vying to become Switzerland of connected home assistants. The $199 speaker sports Alex integration out of the box, with support for Google Assistant and Siri (via iOS) coming in 2018.

This is probably the best position for Sonos to take as it feels the squeeze between cumbersome traditional high-end audio and the more convenient but lower fidelity smart home devices like the Echo. The timing is good too, given that today Google unveiled its beefy Google Home Max smart speaker and the upcoming Apple Homepod bills itself as having superior audio. Being agnostic to your assistant ecosystem of choice could give Sonos an edge and a chance to regain some lustre.

We had three Sonos speakers in our house, and almost immediately stopped using all of them once we got an Amazon Echo. Despite having worse sound, the device was in the kitchen, so it was more convenient to where our family mostly congregates. It’s such a high-class problem, but after experiencing Alexa’s voice control, running to get my phone to control my speaker felt like so much… work.

But was we played more music in the kitchen — whether to cook to, do homework by, or just throw an impromptu dance party — sound quality became more important. My pre-Sonos One solution was to plug an Echo Dot into a Sonos Play:5, but that takes up a lot of counter space, has dangling cords and can make it harder for Alexa to hear my voice. With its smaller footprint and newer technology, the Sonos One becomes an interesting proposition.

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