Sonos One gets Alexa support in Australia

While the Sonos One has been available Down Under since early this year, the voice-enabled speaker launched without any, erm, voice support in Australia.

That changes today, however. Sonos has released a free software update that will allow Australian owners of the speaker to enable Amazon's Alexa assistant on the device, with the firmware side of things handled directly via the companion app.

Joining the US, Canada, the UK and Germany, Australian Sonos One users will now be able to issue Alexa commands and have their speaker perform many common AI-assistant tasks, the notable exception being making phone calls.

“iHeart you, Alexa”

Music is obviously a key area for Sonos, and audio aficionados can get Alexa to control their Sonos systems with voice support for streaming tunes from Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio and TuneIn.

Alexa will also be able to read out the latest headlines from TEN Eyewitness News, reserve a table at a restaurant through its Dimmi skill, provide travel updates from Qantas and, of course, control smart home devices.

Although Sonos speakers now have Audible audiobook support, users cannot start a narration via voice – it still needs to be initialised using the Sonos app. However, once book playback has been started, Alexa can adjust the volume via voice commands.

Sonos has also announced that it will continue to add updates throughout 2018, with AirPlay 2 and Google Assistant support also expected to arrive before the end of the year.