Tag: smart speakers

Sonos is launching a new app in June, alongside new software for its speakers. Well, some of its speakers. The app and software is called ‘Sonos S2’, and it will be compatible with many existing Sonos devices...

App-cracker Jane Manchun Wong has been poking around in Spotify’s innards again, and has uncovered more signs of the streaming service’s work on voice controls. It’s a toggle to enable a feature called ‘Hey Spotify’,...

Smart speakers may be a buzz topic for the music industry still, but a new study suggests that the use of voice assistants like Alexa and Siri in the car may be a bigger tech trend. In the US, at least: Voicebot and Cerence interviewed...

There are many reasons why Apple is one of the world’s most successful companies, and its ‘walled garden’ of hardware, software and services is one of them. However, it has also proved controversial when companies making...

Strategy Analytics is the latest research firm to publish new estimates for the smart speakers market. It claims that global sales grew by 70% to 146.9m units in 2019, including 55.7m in the final quarter of the year. The...

Some new smart-speaker predictions from research firm eMarketer are generating headlines mainly based on the claims about Amazon’s ongoing domination of the market in the US. We’ll get to those in a minute. We think...

Research firm Kids Insights surveys more than 100,000 children every year about their technology and media habits, so its latest report – ‘Future Forecast’ – is well worth a look. “This generation of kids are...

NPR and Edison Research have published their latest ‘Smart Audio Report’, based on a telephone survey of 1,002 people in the US, focusing on smart speakers. The study claims that 24% of American adults – around 60...

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence testified before the US House’s Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on Friday (17 January) about the company’s complaints against Google and Amazon. You can read his full...

In May 2019, Spotify revealed its first hardware: a voice-controlled speaker for use in cars, called ‘Car Thing’, which it would be testing in the US with a small group of listeners. “We might do similar voice-specific...

Is January a slow news month? Not if Sonos’ legal team has anything to do with it. The company is suing Google alleging infringement of five patents, and as the New York Times explained, is seeking financial damages but...

Smart speakers and voice assistants are one of the big draws for this year’s CES consumer-tech show in Las Vegas, which kicked off officially yesterday. Among the announcements from day one: news of Samsung’s Galaxy Home...