Sonos Reportedly Unveiling Its Own Alexa-Competing Voice Assistant in June

While Sonos' range of speakers and voice-controlled soundbars support Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant, the audio company will soon release its own voice assistant, reported the The Verge on Wednesday. 

Sonos Voice, as the voice assistant is reportedly called, lets customers control music with voice commands and will arrive on Sonos speakers as part of a software update on June 1 for US device owners. All Sonos devices running the company's S2 software will support the assistant, including some on our list of the best Sonos speakers, according to the report. 

When it launches, Sonos Voice will reportedly work with audio streaming services Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, and Sonos Radio -- with notable exceptions Spotify and Google's YouTube Music. The voice control activation phrase will be, unsurprisingly, "Hey Sonos."

Code snippets within Sonos' speaker-managing app unearthed on Reddit in November suggested the company was gearing up to release a voice assistant app, according to a report by Protocol. But Sonos hasn't been coy about developing an assistant after its November 2019 acquisition of Snips, creators of an AI voice platform for managing connected devices.

The code snippets suggest that Sonos Voice would allow users to switch between voice assistants, including Alexa and Google Assistant, at whim -- likely by using each service's unique activation phrase. Considering Sonos won a patent lawsuit against Google late last year, forcing the latter to eliminate features in some device manager apps, sharing voice assistants is comparatively harmonious.

It's unclear when Sonos Voice will launch in other markets. Sonos didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.