According to people familiar with the matter, SONOS is preparing to officially launch its voice assistant "SONOS voice control" in the next few weeks in order to control the SONOS audio platform to play music It is said that on June 1, the rumored voice assistant will first cover American users through software update, and then will be launched internationally.
Previously, SONOS has adopted similar products of other platforms in its speakers, but with its own voice assistant, SONOS voice will replace Amazon Alexa and Google assistant. At present, all SONOS products running the company's "S2" software version will support SONOS voice.
SONOS recently released job recruitment related to "SONOS voice experience". The company said its ambition is to "make voice interaction completely private, more personalized and more natural". The debut of SONOS voice control will mark the time for SONOS to finally expand into the service sector, as the company is seeking to expand its hardware business.
In order to comply with SONOS's pursuit of privacy, the function will not record user audio commands or forward them to the cloud for processing. "Hey SONOS" will become the wake-up word of the company. The company's internal test claims that it is faster than the competitor's assistant service on core music tasks.
It is not a secret that SONOS develops its own voice function. The company has expressed interest in customer surveys and found early details about the service in the SONOS mobile app last year.
Currently, SONOS allows users to play specific songs, artists or playlists through voice commands, as well as other functions. After the release, SONOS voice will cooperate with Apple Music, Amazon music, Pandora, deezer and the company's own SONOS radio. Spotify and Google's YouTube music have not yet joined.
Previously, although SONOS voice control was the founder of Wi Fi speakers, they didn't have their own voice assistant, so that in Amazon, Google, Apple After taking out their own products, SONOS's position was quite embarrassing. And even in the current era of streaming music, SONOS still has no corresponding services.
The company has seen the future. It will pay more attention to software and try to establish itself as a central hub for streaming Entertainment - possibly surpassing audio to integrate video. Patrick Spence, SONOS's CEO, hinted at these goals in an interview: "we're recruiting software people into new areas we haven't entered today. In hindsight, it's easier to understand that a company has been committed to all these great things. We just didn't see it at that moment."
Last month, foreign media the verge reported that SONOS's next new hardware product is a cheap strip speaker SONOS ray with a price of about $250, which will be released in the next few weeks. However, unlike the company's more expensive arc and beam bar speakers, it will not integrate microphones for voice control, that is, it does not support SONOS voice control