Ikea Now Selling Sonos-Enabled Stand-Alone Speakers

to make sound “from interesting products” rather than designing inexpensive copycat powered speakers. Ikea bought a SoC from Sonos that will allow Ikea customers to control music with the Sonos app from products with “Sonos inside,” Spence said. The hope, he said, is to bring Ikea customers to the Sonos concept and then upsell them to another Sonos product over time. The relationship is part of an international expansion for Sonos. Ikea speakers with Sonos technology start at $99 vs. the $199 entry-level Sonos One at Sonos.com. It wasn’t clear how the speakers differ or where Ikea might have cut costs to bring out a Sonos-enabled speaker at half of Sonos' price; Sonos didn’t respond to questions. The Ikea website describes the Symfonisk bookshelf speaker as a “collaboration” between the two companies, allowing the speaker to integrate with other Sonos products. Consumers can stream “music, podcasts and radio via Wi-Fi without interruptions from phone calls or notifications,” Ikea says, and “the music keeps playing even when your phone or tablet is not around.” The speakers support all major music streaming services, it says, and users can control speakers individually “so you can play music in one room while the children are listening to an audiobook in another one, or play the same sound throughout the home.” The speakers are compatible with AirPlay 2, but they don’t offer voice control.