Sonos admits its biggest weakness, says it's working on it

Sonos

Sonos is working on integrating voice control in its speakers. This is the first time Sonos has said publicly that it's working on such technology.

John MacFarlane, the co-founder and CEO of the connected speaker company, just published a lengthy blog post about changes at Sonos.

MacFarlane calls out the Echo, Amazon's highly-regarded connected speaker — which some consider a Sonos competitor — as an example of a product that uses voice control well.

"Voice recognition isn’t new; today it’s nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google, and Cortana," MacFarlane writes. "But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather, and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform."

"Alexa/Echo is the first product to really showcase the power of voice control in the home. Its popularity with consumers will accelerate innovation across the entire industry. What is novel today will become standard tomorrow. Here again, Sonos is taking the long view in how best to bring voice-enabled music experiences into the home. Voice is a big change for us, so we’ll invest what’s required to bring it to market in a wonderful way."

MacFarlane writes that "We know the future is one where paid streaming and voice control play significant roles, and we’re committed to running a sustainable, profitable business so that we can fund innovation in these and other areas for decades to come."

It's unclear what Sonos plans to do with regard to voice search, and a company spokesperson would not comment beyond the blog post.

MacFarlane's post comes just a week after Amazon announced two new products that take advantage of Alexa voice control — the Amazon Tap, a smaller, portable version of the Echo speaker, and Echo Dot, which you connect to an existing home stereo to give it voice control.

A Sonos spokesperson declined to comment beyond the blog post, which you can read here. 

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