Sonos has long been one of the biggest players in the home audio market, with the company only expanding into the headphone segment last year.
A lot has happened since. Sonos launched a revamped companion app back in May 2024 which significantly marred the company’s reputation. The revamp promised a “faster, easier, better” overall experience, but delivered the opposite. It was laden with issues, functionality flaws, and missing features.
Now, in a bid to regain some of that lost trust, Sonos is going with a unique strategy. It’s trying to expand Sonos Voice Control’s smart home capabilities.
The voice assistant, which first made its debut back in 2022, is available on all voice-enabled Sonos speakers and primarily allows users to control music playback. The assistant has since gained the ability to set timers and tell you about the weather, but with what Sonos seems to be cooking, you might be looking at using your voice-enabled Sonos speaker to control specific smart lights in your home.
The development was highlighted by HueBlog (via The Verge), suggesting that Sonos Voice Control could gain the ability to control Philips Hue lighting before the end of this year. This comes roughly half a year after the audio giant laid off over 200 employees.
You won’t have to wait too long for confirmation
According to the report, users will be able to command their Sonos speaker to turn Hue lighting on and off, adjust brightness, and potentially even activate Hue Scenes. Said commands will reportedly be processed locally, suggesting that they are similar to current Sonos Voice Control commands and will not be sent over to the cloud to be processed.
It’s not entirely clear when the two companies will announce the partnership, though Philips’ September 3rd media event could be a likely candidate.
For what it’s worth, the audio giant was also previously reported to be working on an Android streaming box, though those plans were canceled earlier this year in March. That serves as a reminder to approach the new leak with similar skepticism until an official announcement is made.
