Smart Move by Sonos
Sonos acquires Snips, a privacy-by-design voice interface company
In a recent press release, Sonos announced the acquisition of Snips, a French company developing voice user interfaces with privacy-by-design (see also the story on the Verge). This is one of the most exciting moves in the smart speaker arena all year!
If we look back a year, Sonos was in a tight spot. They are known for their high-quality user-interfaces for high-quality speakers. The immaculate user-experience in audio reproduction is what differentiates them from their competition. Or that is what had differentiated them. Suddenly, Sonos was in a crowded segment of the market, where the GAFA companies and their uncle introduced smart speakers. The new category of smart speakers has exactly the same selling point as Sonos, a convenient way to access music, and with smart speakers you could do much more than that. Where does that leave poor Sonos? Their whole unique selling point (UPS) was gone and their market segment was now an inferior product of the much bigger smart speaker market.
So, then they added Amazon Alexa as a feature of their speakers. Then they added Google Home. At least now they were as-good-as Amazon Alexa, but with a different visual design. Blah. Honestly, I don’t see myself buying such a device. It would be undoubtedly more expensive than Amazon Alexa and the user-experience is the same. The remaining arguments are visual design and sound quality. Hi-fi enthusiast might prefer Sonos over Alexa, though I suspect such people would prefer actual Hi-fi equipement, instead of something optimized for convenience. So again, where does that leave poor Sonos? What I’m trying to say that I would not by Alexa either, so why should I buy Sonos? I don’t want third-party companies listening to my conversations, I don’t want NSA listening to my bedroom, heck, I don’t want even advertisers to listen on me.
That’s where the genius of Sonos acquiring Snips comes in. In a situation where the news are saturated with privacy-problems related to GAFA-products, where smart speakers send your private speech to third-party companies and your neighbour, Sonos buys themselves a new unique selling point; privacy. The dream is that Sonos products would continue to be leaders in convenience and sound quality, but in difference to their competition, Sonos would come without loss of privacy. You do not have to sell your (and your childrens’) soul(s) to the advertising industry to listen to music. How backwards and how genius is that?
Assuming that Sonos gets a privacy-by-design product out their door soon, that would also make Sonos the first big company to have a sensible product on the smart-speaker market. That’s big. There are plenty of startups who want to do the same, but the weight of Sonos is something different entirely. It is an established company, with an established customer base. From a situation where Sonos was almost beaten to death on their home-turf, to becoming a pathfinder for the whole segment, this is a remarkable turn for Sonos as a company. At the same time, by providing a realistic product with privacy-by-design, it will make it really hard for the others not to follow suit. The tide could be turning. GAFA beware! In fact, a privacy-by-design, Sonos speaker could be the first smart speaker I buy. Exciting!
