Ditching Sonos if voice control takes much longer

Tired of waiting for Sonos to incorporate Echo voice control Was promised as early2017 and then postponed to "later this year." I am ready to dump if this company doesn't provide an accurate and reasonable solution in the near term.

No it was not promised "early 2017 and then postponed". The official press release stated the following:

The companies will begin rolling out the experience through an invite-only beta test later this year, with general availability in 2017.

http://press-us.sonos.com/134980-sonos-with-partners-and-industry-leaders-ushers-in-new-era-of-connected-home-listening

The fact some assumed this meant early 2017 is not Sonos' fault. And if you dump them, who are you dumping them for?

A factually incorrect original post and a pointless, empty threat. (Might as well tell it like it is.)

So say Sonos is the first to come out with an Alexa integration, which seems likely. Are you going to avoid Sonos and wait for the Bose or someone else to come out? I get the impatience, I really wish it was here now as well. And I get the desire to 'play your cards', but the fact is, we really don't have very good cards to play in this scenario.

I hate these threads. The bunny never, ever gets it.

Tired of waiting for Sonos to incorporate Echo voice control Was promised as early2017 and then postponed to "later this year." I am ready to dump if this company doesn't provide an accurate and reasonable solution in the near term.
If you are ready to walk the walk, let me know what kind of equipment you'll be selling. I like a good deal.

I'd imagine that Sonos are as keen to release an update that enables Alexa integration as we all are.
I'd also think that they would like to get it released before the Apple Homepod is released, which from what I've read is December.
If they don't they will lose potential customers to Apple and other manufacturers.
I know what keeps me with Sonos is the fantastic sound quality of their speakers, I'd be surprised if the Homepod sounds as good.

Apple Music could be an issue though, as it's currently not available with on the Amazon Echo, although maybe that won't be an issue depending on how the integration will work?

I'd certainly agree that I would see very little reason for Apple music to provide the support/hooks necessary to Amazon/ Sonos to help the integration, since they are indeed working on the HomePod system. But I'll hold out some hope that the number of current customers in the Sonos Ecosystem who are Apple Music Subscribers might make them think twice.

I guess we'll need to see when Sonos releases the software update. But I could also see that it might be in phases. First phase is these X groups of streams, then some time later another Y , etc, as companies recognize the number of Sonos users who want this system. Or, they could just say "we already integrated with the Sonos App, and we're not dedicating any more resources, since there's already a way"....

I'll hold out some hope that the number of current customers in the Sonos Ecosystem who are Apple Music Subscribers might make them think twice.

Case in point is how I switched from Apple Music to Google Play as soon as the latter was launched in India a couple of months ago. With that, I no longer care about native casting from the Apple Music app, Google offers that on Sonos today - indeed that has been the case for over a year. Of course, having used it, one realises that it isn't all that much of an additional feature to what is provided within the Sonos controller interface for both Apple and Google and both basically are just slightly different flavours of the same ice cream.

But other than such actions, we really don't have good cards as melvimbe accurately pointed out. Rants are just wasted breath. One only hopes that whenever the integration is released, it is a capable one.

This article I read this morning is very interesting : http://uk.businessinsider.com/aiqudo-startup-voice-assistants-better-2017-8

Indeed; every few years the open standards and communication across different OEM devices challenge raises its head and until solved successfully, someone makes a lot of money from walled garden approaches. Until the next set of applications that lets someone else do so.