Yesterdays (March 11th, 2016) Sonos Anouncment

Ah, I see your point. Didn't mean it that way, simply that I'm not sure what Sonos' plans are to ensure that consumers with $180 - $200 burning a hole in their pocket choose the Play:1 over the Echo.

If consumers have to buy the Echo to get the voice control, Sonos will have to somehow convince them to also buy a Play:1. Or, can Sonos come up with a standalone microphone array device that's very cheap to enable Alexa, and convince consumers that they're better off with the better SQ and music selection of Sonos speakers vs Echo. Must be some really interesting strategy sessions going on down in Santa Barbsra.

Well I don't imagine Sonos will allow an echo to become a Sonos zone, so it'll have to be a more integrated solution than simply using an echo for voice control.

Come to think of it, they hired Matt Welch back in Sept, so Sonos has been thinking about Alexa voice control for a while. They have no doubt been improving Matt's Alexa integration ever since.

http://mattwel.ch/

http://mattwel.ch/voice-control-for-the-sonos-with-an-echo/

So the only question is how to solve the microphone issue?

Interesting. MacFarlane was asked specifically about SoundHound, said they're not going that direction. So, Alexa it is, then!

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7256313/sonos-ceo-john-macfarlane-from-the-desk-of

Interesting. MacFarlane was asked specifically about SoundHound, said they're not going that direction. So, Alexa it is, then!

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7256313/sonos-ceo-john-macfarlane-from-the-desk-of

I find this paragraph from the article really interesting. Obviously they've been looking at it longer than a week but interesting that perhaps a few conversations including one with an uber driver may have had some influence. Emphasis added mine:

I was at the Allen & Co. conference in Tucson last week and everybody there is a Sonos owner and they were asking, "What do you guys think about voice, will that ever be a part of Sonos?" And it became blindingly clear to me that it was important that we step into that conversation. Coming back, the Uber driver asked me about it. He literally overheard the discussion with Joy [Howard], who is our CMO, and Pete [Pedersen], the leader for PR. He got off the phone and said, "Man, you're totally right, I was gonna ask you, How do I integrate my [Amazon] Echo with my Sonos?" And he had a Play:1 in one room and an Echo in the kitchen and Play 1 in his bedroom. I came back and said we just need to step into this because we're tone deaf if we don't.

This reads a lot like the Bill Gates epiphany about the internet in the mid nineties and almost overnight changing the Microsoft focus in that direction.

The sales figures don't back that up.

What are the sales figures?

The sales figures don't back that up.

What are the sales figures?

They're the number of units an item has sold but that's not important right now!

Sorry, couldn't resist that...

Interesting. MacFarlane was asked specifically about SoundHound, said they're not going that direction. So, Alexa it is, then!

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7256313/sonos-ceo-john-macfarlane-from-the-desk-of

Or maybe Siri. I do agree that Alexa is much more likely though.

I think that delivering a better streaming experience is much more important that the voice thing. Sonos needs to have something like casting, where anything that is being played/heard on a smart device can be streamed to play from the speakers, using the native service app.

There is also probably a market for an app that can interface with a local NAS and do all the tricks that can be done with how a local library is accessed and then have the music play via Sonos hardware. That ought to address the 65k issue as well.

The Sonos controller would then be used for just hardware housekeeping chores.

I think that at this time voice comes a distant third, though I suppose there is a future in it once applications become pervasive across various possible uses, not just as a gimmick for playing music from a particular service provider.