Sonos: Why the smart speaker firm doesn't want you to see its latest products

Sonos doesn't want you to see what it's been up to. The smart speaker company has released a whole range of new kit. Taken together, it is both a noticeable departure from the company's recent history but also a surprising embrace of its past: it wants to give you speakers that you can hide away, and is aiming them squarely at the professional installers that helped the company grow when it was founded less than 20 years ago. Sonos has announced not only that its new Amp will go on sale in a new and wider variety of places – including the UK and the rest of Europe, and allowing them to finally plug their existing speakers into the internet – but also that it will come alongside a new collection known as Sonos Architectural by Sonance, developed in partnership with the latter company. Those speakers are built to fade away: to stick to the walls and near-invisibly make sound, as well as also offering the first ever Sonos speaker made to live outside.