Sonos Announces Expanded Partnerships for Connected Home Listening

Founded in 2002, Sonos is now present in more than 60 countries, and already supports dozens of streaming music providers. Still, the company’s networked home sound systems have remained a closed-garden concerning software and remote control integration. Now, Sonos wants to change all that and announced new partnerships with Amazon for voice control, a new level of software integration with Spotify, and control integration with AV control manufacturers such as Crestron, Lutron, Savant, Control4, and iPort, among others.

Futuresource Consulting has just completed their latest a round of research into the worldwide home audio market. The key findings indicate worldwide demand for home audio products continues to grow. New entrants Amazon and Google are creating innovation challenges to which the audio industry is responding, creating increasing consumer awareness for wireless speakers and connected applications. The report also confirms that, in 2015, Harman/JBL held the position of top home audio brand with an 11% unit share, whilst Bose was the leader in terms of revenue with an 18% share.

While there are several competing immersive audio proposals and published High Dynamic Range (HDR) standards for vision, Dolby Laboratories continues to provide its totally integrated approach with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos experiences in a successful way, gradually and consistently becoming the dominant player. This is well illustrated by Dolby’s recent announcements of content collaborations with Lionsgate and Amazon, as well as the worldwide expansion of Dolby Atmos screens installed or committed.