News

Sonos and Amazon expanded access to voice control with Alexa on Sonos devices

Related products: Service News
Sonos and Amazon expanded access to voice control with Alexa on Sonos devices

Today we are happy to announce that Amazon’s Alexa launched on compatible Sonos devices in additional countries, giving listeners a new and seamless way to control their Sonos speakers using their voice. Alexa will provide more listeners an easy way to play music, set timers and alarms, check the weather, control compatible smart home devices, and more with simple commands.

The full list of countries with Alexa on Sonos can be found here.

Newly supported countries have access to Alexa International Version, giving listeners simple voice control in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

  • Say it to play it: Enjoy seamless, hands-free control of music and TV content with simple commands like, “Alexa, play jazz music,” or “Alexa, pause the movie.” Alexa International Version is compatible with Amazon Music, Spotify, and TuneIn for music streaming and Amazon Prime Video and Netflix for video streaming.
  • Seize the day: Stay organized with an easy way to set timers and alarms, add events to a shared calendar, adjust a shopping list, get a cookie recipe, and more. Jumpstart your day by asking Alexa to check the weather or share a flash briefing of today’s news.
  • Dial in your home: Create the ideal home environment by controlling your lighting, smart plugs, thermostats, security cameras, and more with your voice.

Sonos customers have the ability to choose their preferred voice service for each individual speaker, and even multiple voice services on a single system for compatible devices. Last year, Sonos introduced Sonos Voice Control, a new fast and private way to control music on Sonos speakers, in the United States and France, with additional countries to follow. In collaboration with Amazon to further voice interoperability, Sonos Voice Control is able to work concurrently alongside Alexa.

That’s sound nice.

I am also waiting for the expand of countries in which Google assistant is available.

Are there any possibly of that?

 


Why offer Hindi language but not India geography? I don't need either, but it is curious to see this. Or have I missed something?


Why offer Hindi language but not India geography? I don't need either, but it is curious to see this. Or have I missed something?

 

Probably because offering languages is a technical matter, while offering the service in a specific country is a legal matter.


Nothing legal about it; it needs a local server infrastructure to match what Amazon has in place, to avoid latency. Sonos will not deploy that because South Asia is not a target market as it definitely is for Amazon. Which is why Hindi is curious.

I look forward to a Sonos staff response. For curiosities sake.


Nothing legal about it; it needs a local server infrastructure to match what Amazon has in place, to avoid latency. Sonos will not deploy that because South Asia is not a target market as it definitely is for Amazon. Which is why Hindi is curious.

I look forward to a Sonos staff response. For curiosities sake.

 

Legal in the sense that Sonos needs to work with regulations in India, same as other countries, to sell and have the voice assistant operating in their country. There are surely privacy laws and regulations about recording audio and such to be considered. If this were not the case, than there would be no country restrictions (except for a relative view that do ) with voice assistants.  Once the service is available in a language, you could apply it anywhere.

So you’re saying that Sonos is just blocking Alexa in India because there isn’t enough market there to justify the support?


Yes, Any investment needs a business case. Amazon has one for south Asia, Sonos does not. Not to, as you say, block Alexa, but by not enabling it on Sonos via investments needed to make it latency free.

Sonos was running India integration in beta for a year and decided to not progress it.

SVC probably makes this redundant, so the question remains - why Hindi!