How Sonos Is Trying to Future-Proof the Smart Speaker

As smart speakers gained popularity, a big name in the space seemed to have fallen by the wayside. Sonos pioneered a high-quality connected home-theater speaker system in the early 2000s. In 2016, it began making a shift to support streaming music services on its products. It shipped its first assistant-laden speaker, the Alexa-enabled Sonos One, in 2017, but has now taken that idea even further. The company, on Wednesday, unveiled Beam, a smart sound bar, which will soon be virtual assistant agnostic: It's shipping with Alexa, gaining Siri control with AirPlay 2 in July, and adding Google Assistant compatibility later this year.