by Dan Moren
Sonos holding October 4 event, will likely announce smart speaker
In an interesting piece of timing that is probably not at all coincidence, Sonos has announced it’s holding an event in New York City on October 4th, which many expect to be the company announcing its own smart speaker–largely because an FCC filing uncovered earlier this week spilled the beans on a device with a far-field microphone used for speech recognition.
The company has previously said that it will be adding the ability to control its speakers via voice control on the Echo, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it were also working to allow for similar control via the Google Assistant and Siri too. After all, it behooves the company to have its speakers work with as many players in that market as possible. Especially if it can build in support for multi-room audio with speakers from other companies as well–then again, that might be cutting into Sonos’s secret sauce.
Regardless, the smart speaker market seems to be getting very crowded indeed.