Credit: Sonos
Following this week's launch of Amazon's Alexa and their Echo smart speaker range, Sonos has announced their Australian owners of their Sonos One smart speaker won't gain access to the smart assistant until later this year.
"Although Alexa is now available on Amazon Echo devices in Australia, Alexa will not be ready for Sonos One until Autumn 2018. We are working hard on our software to ensure a great Alexa experience on Sonos soon," they said in a public statement sent out via email.
Despite being billed as a smart speaker that will play nice with multiple smart assistants, this announcement is the latest in a string of local setbacks for Sonos One - which launched late last year without support for either Amazon Alexa or the Google Assistant.
When local availability for Amazon's smart speaker range was initially announced, Sonos issued a press release to Australian media indicating that Alexa would come to Sonos One in early 2018.
"When Alexa support is enabled in a new market it takes dedicated engineering work and testing to bring support to Sonos," they said at the time.
A Sonos representative has since reached out to PC World to clarify, saying "There is no delay – this is exactly on plan. When we launched Sonos One, Amazon Alexa wasn’t available in Australia yet. Once a partner launches in a new territory, there is work to be done to bring it on our platform."
"Sonos One is also a fantastic speaker that gives people everything they love about our best selling PLAY:1, but with more capabilities (and future capabilities) in a sleeker package."
"We’re excited to bring Alexa to Sonos One in Australia’s Autumn, and services like Google Assistant, Airplay2 and new streaming services, as we continue to expand the Sonos platform."
In our review of the Sonos One, we conceded that "There’s no question that the Sonos One smart speaker sounds better than the Google Home does. However, buying one now is a proposition that’s precarious at best given the omission of the smart assistant side of things."
"At the moment, it only supports Amazon’s Alexa - which still isn’t available in Australia and New Zealand. This means, you’re basically buying a regular Play:1 on the promise that Sonos deliver on their Google Assistant support. More than that, you’re paying extra on the promise that integration will be as smooth, if not more, than the regular Google Home experience."
You can read our full review here.
