Sonos will launch the limited-time “Sonos Two” bundle Friday, offering two voice-enabled Sonos One speakers, regularly $199 each, for $349, it said in a Thursday announcement. That’s the same price as one Apple HomePod, which goes on preorder Friday, ahead of Feb. 9 availability (see 1801230058). Apple pushed Apple Music integration in its Tuesday HomePod news release. The bundle announcement coincided with an ad Sonos ran in The New York Times Thursday headlined “Freedom of Choice.” The full-page ad shows a Sonos One speaker with logos of nine music services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Apple Music, SiriusXM, TuneIn and Tidal. Copy for the ad reads: “Big Tech wants to lock you into one music service. We think what you listen to should be up to you. That’s why we support over 80 music services, more than any other smart speaker system.” The announcement said Sonos has always been agnostic about sources of music and audio available for its speakers and said the company is “doing the same with voice assistants, preferring to stay open-minded and let listeners make the choices.” On whether Sonos would work with Siri or Bixby voice assistants in the future, a spokeswoman said the company is “always looking to add more voice partners.” On the timing of the Times ad, she said: “With several conversations around smart speakers, the ad calls out a trend where we are seeing big tech try to lock people into a single ecosystem.” She repeated Sonos’ agnosticism with music services and said Sonos has “always been about creating a home sound system to fill any room with your favorite music and content, not just a single speaker.” Sonos is continuing to work on Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 integration for later this year, she said.
U.S. broadband households have average 9.1 connected devices, putting increasing demands on networks, Parks data show, with sales of such devices seen reaching 442 million by 2020. More than 60 percent of such households received their router from their ISP, the researcher reported Wednesday. If a household with five accounts streamed HD video simultaneously, it would need at least 30 Mbps for optimal viewing, said the report done for Calix. The average connection is 18.7 Mbps, Akamai finds, and Cisco forecasts consumer VOD traffic will nearly double by 2021, said Parks. Streaming media use strains home networks: nearly 70 percent of U.S. households subscribe to at least one over-the-top service, the firm said. In the past year, 37 percent of U.S. broadband households reported “slow” Wi-Fi networks, and nearly a fifth of consumers said their Wi-Fi network stops working “almost weekly.” The rapidly growing installed base of devices creates opportunities for MVPD support for premium Wi-Fi performance, universal support for IoT devices and data security from edge devices to the cloud, said Parks.
Apple highlighted homegrown “audio innovations” and “advanced technologies” such as real-time acoustic modeling in its long-awaited (see 1711170065) HomePod announcement Tuesday. The speaker was originally slated for a December release. Apple positioned HomePod as a “powerful speaker that sounds amazing and adapts to wherever it’s playing.” At 7 inches high, HomePod’s form factor is shorter and wider than the Amazon Echo or smart speakers from Harman/Kardon and JBL. The speaker uses the company's proprietary tech and learns the preferences and tastes of users, which are “shared across devices,” and it works with Apple Music. The company pushed security and privacy, saying only after “Hey Siri” is recognized locally on the device will any information be sent to Apple servers. Information will be encrypted and sent using an anonymous Siri identifier, it said. Apple didn’t respond to questions.
Online sales reached a record $108.2 billion for the Nov. 1-Dec. 31 holiday stretch, up 15 percent, Adobe reported Tuesday. Voice assistant sales doubled, with half of surveyed consumers using assistants daily. Mobile revenue was a third of Q4 online revenue at $35.9 billion, up 28 percent, with smartphone orders averaging $110, up 2 percent, though still less than desktop-made purchases. Cyber Monday was the first day that more than $2 billion posted from smartphones and tablets, said the company Friday. Search drove the most revenue during the holiday season at 45 percent, it said.
Amazon didn’t respond to questions Tuesday about White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Sunday social media callout of Alexa for enabling her toddler to order a toy via an Echo speaker. “Alexa, we have a problem if my 2 year old can order a Batman toy by yelling ‘Batman!’ over and over again into the Echo,” Sanders tweeted using the @PressSec handle. The comment evoked a predictable firestorm of tweets. Some Twitter users criticized Sanders for sending the tweet from her official White House Twitter account. At least one user provided step-by-step instructions for parental controls that either disable voice purchasing or require a passcode to confirm purchases.
Comcast is widening the reach of its home automation offering beyond Xfinity Home to its 15 million-plus Xfinity internet customers over the next 90 days, Xfinity Home Senior Vice President-General Manager Dan Herscovici told us Wednesday.
Cable operators have smart speaker opportunities and could offer voice-enabled devices in TV bundles, Kenneth Harper, Nuance vice president-emerging solutions, told us Friday. A smart speaker that integrates with a TV is different from what Echo and Google Home do today, he said. Industry needs to identify sought-after skills and services and map skills to match, said Harper. He gave the example of a consumer wanting to cancel an order based on a fraudulent credit card report without having to speak precise syntax. The smart home has to evolve to natural language, he added. And he sought more interoperability for voice-enabled smart homes.
To present Sharp as an 8K ecosystem leader, it will show at CES this week in Las Vegas content creation capability via an 8K camcorder that will touch 8K along the chain, including commercial storage, distribution and content transmission over 5G, said Rey Roque, vice president-channel marketing and sales, in a Friday interview. Japanese broadcaster NHK has begun delivering programming in 8K leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
Powermat, supplier of public wireless charging stations, announced Thursday it joined the Wireless Power Consortium. The company said it will contribute its technology and expertise to advance inductive wireless charging capabilities, while remaining backward-compatible with the WPC’s Qi ecosystem.
Control4 bought intellectual property and key operating assets of remote management services company Ihiji to give a broad view into health of connected homes, Control4 Senior Vice President-Marketing Susan Cashen told us. Ihiji Invision device management gives Control4 dealers the “right tools and skill set to make sure that everything they’re building in the connected home -- whether it includes Control4 automation or not -- is stable,” said Cashen. Network and device management capabilities are crucial to integrators to ensure good service for connected homes, Ihiji CEO Stuart Rench told us; he's taking a new job at the combined firm (see personals section of this publication's current issue).