The Sonos Beam and One support Amazon Alexa, but that support can be simply withdrawn by Amazon. Users would be informed about Sonos models lose Alexa support, but this would be done in the very short term.
Sonos models lose Alexa support
That the Sonos Beam and One offer support for Alexa is good news, but now it appears that Amazon could just withdraw that support. The owners of the products would be informed in that case, but this would be very short term. This is evident from documents that can be found on the website of US Securities and Exchange Commission as Sonos intends to go to the stock exchange. Should Amazon do this, the speakers will lose their voice assistant.
The document reads the following:
Our current agreement with Amazon allows Amazon to disable the Alexa integration in our Sonos One and Sonos products with limited notice. As such, it is possible that Amazon, which sells products that we have, can not be sold, that would cause our Sonos One or Sonos products to lose their voice-enabled functionality. Amazon could also start charging us for this integration which would harm our operating results.
Amazon could also choose to charge for the use of Alexa, causing Sonos to miss out on additional sales or pass on costs to the consumer. Fortunately Sonos is always open about the use of voice assistant. For example, the support for Google Assistant has been promised since the introduction of the Sonos One in 2017. When that assistant was made available, it might alleviate the blow for a possible lack of Alexa. However, there is no guarantee that Sonos can make a deal with Google.
We are working to establish partnerships with other companies that have developed voice-control enablement technology, but we can not be successful in doing so. If you do not have developed alternative partnerships for similar voice-enabled products or if we have not developed alternative partnerships for similar voice-enabled products or if we have reputation may be harmed and our business and operating results may suffer.
Of course, all this is going to be a different story. Perhaps this is part of the standard text that Amazon sends to its partners, so that it can deal with third-party partners if something seems to go wrong. Amazon must of course also be able to protect itself against malicious practices. To date, however, the company has not withdrawn Amazon Alexa support anywhere, so this does not seem to be something that you have to worry about. Amazon has not yet responded to this news.
