Sonos is hosting a launch event on October 4, and all signs point to a smart speaker with support for voice assistants like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.
The company sent TNW an invite to the event in New York City. The image features a prominent Rolling Stones-esque mouth, and a half obscured microphone logo, which are telling enough. Other publications appear to have received the other half. Sonos also recently tweaked its privacy policy with language that explicitly mentions voice control.
In any case, it’s not much of a surprise, Sonos said such a speaker was coming when it first announced its partnership with Amazon last year.
What’s more interesting is a recent FCC filing – spotted by Zatz not Funny! – which suggests the speaker will support several different voice platforms. Amazon Alexa is almost certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google Assistant or even Siri. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see Bixby and Cortana too.
As far as I’m aware, every other smart speaker forces you to use one assistant. Letting you mix and match services would definitely give Sonos an edge over the competition, especially considering not everyone in a household may run on the same platform.
It’s not clear whether Sonos plans to announce just one speaker, or update its entire line. In any case, it won’t be long until we find out