Amazon Alexa once again expanded its ecological chain and the battle for third-party open platforms has begun.

Recently, smart audio manufacturer Sonos held a conference in New York. During the conference, Sonos announced a strategic partnership with Amazon. Users can control Sonos devices through Amazonâ€™s personal assistant Alexa.

Previously, Amazon launched Alexa's derivative product: the smart speaker Echo. Eventually, Echo's performance in the market far exceeded expectations, making Sonos feel pressure in front of Echo. While the outside world was expecting a bloody battle between the two, Sonos suddenly announced the ability to communicate with the dead opponent Echo.

Sonos implements software integration upgrades through the Alexa Voice Service SDK. After integration, users can use Alexa to control their own Sonos sound system. Users can use Alexa to give relevant voice instructions to finish playing, pause, skip songs, and control the volume and other operations, without additional learning new voice instructions. Sonos can be used with Alexa Eco's other hardware products, including Echo, Echo Dot, Tap and Fire TV. Sonos will begin testing this product integration project by the end of this year and will be open to all Sonos users in early 2017.

Sonos CEO McFarland writes:

Alexa/Echo is the first product to demonstrate powerful voice control capabilities in smart homes. Its popularity will accelerate innovation across the industry and today's new technologies will become tomorrow's standards.

As we all know, Alexa's core product is Echo. The data shows that Amazon has sold 3 million Echo smart stereos, and its function and sales volume are increasing. Echo will become a multi-dimensional software and hardware ecosystem. Currently, Echo supports songs, shopping, taxis and home control. Echo continues to cooperate with companies like Sonos to expand its ecological chain, and Sonos can Access Echo to create a variety of user experience and promote sales.

In order to seize the intelligent software and hardware entrance, Google also released Google Home, a voice smart home product, and today, Google officially announced that it will reorganize Nest Labs, a smart home unit that was acquired for US$3.2 billion, to completely integrate Nest into Google. Internet of Things department. The reorganized Nest will be invested in the R&D of Google Home products and will compete directly with Echo in the future. In addition, Apple has also stepped up efforts to deploy HomeKit's third-party device access efforts this year. Sources said that existing domestic brands are negotiating with Apple to access HomeKit. Last week, according to product documentation provided by the FCC (United States Federal Communications Commission), Samsung seems to be developing its own voice assistant independently. At the time, Kamin will launch a smart stereo "Samco Scoop."

Judging from the above information, all major giants are using smart home products as their entrance, and they are closely planning to open up third-party software and hardware open platforms. It can be predicted that they may start positive competition in the smart home field next year.