Orlaith CostelloSonos is allegedly in talks to potentially add Roku’s voice assistant control into its smart speakers, CNET reports, citing insider sources. The report says this partnership – if it is even happening – are still in “preliminary talks,” and both companies are months away from officially announcing a collaboration, especially given that Roku’s voice assistant has not be released yet.
It is not the first time that Sonos partnered with smaller third parties to give themselves an edge in the increasingly bulging audio market dominated by tech giants Apple, Amazon, and Google. They have been moving into the virtual assistant market for some time.
The Sonos One allows you to access Amazon’s Alexa and control its smart home devices, and they been insisting for some time that they will be adding Google Assistant support to the One Speakers for its Android users, which is still in development.
Roku has also announced that it is launching Google Assistant integration, to compete with the likes of Amazon.
If these two brands were to combine forces it would undoubtedly help both the “multimedia underdogs” as CNET refers to them.
Their collaboration would make it easier to set up and sync Sonos speakers with a Roku-connected TV, with CNET suggesting that Sonos would integrate with Roku Connect, Roku’s Entertainment Assistant announced at CES 2018, so the devices could control one another or the speaker would control the TV.