Sonos counters Apple’s HomePod by selling two speakers for same $349 price

Apple’s HomePod hasn’t started shipping yet, but Sonos is already making moves to protect its rule over the multi-room audio market. Today the company announced that for a limited time, you’ll be able to buy two Sonos One smart speakers for $349 — the price of a single HomePod. Sonos isn’t specifying how long the promotion, which officially kicks off tomorrow, will last. After an initial delay, the HomePod is set to launch on February 9th.

The Sonos One has Amazon Alexa voice integration built in, and the company has promised to add Google Assistant to the device as well sometime in 2018. Users can speak out voice commands to play music on Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, and other services, though Apple Music isn’t among them. But much like the company’s other speakers, the Sonos One fully supports playing Apple Music content through the Sonos app on a smartphone or PC.

Yesterday Sonos published a blog post titled “Why Open Matters” that seemed directly pointed at competing speakers from Amazon, Google, and now Apple. “Since our early days, we’ve been agnostic about the sources of music and audio you can hear on Sonos, preferring to stay open-minded and let you make the choice,” the company wrote. And indeed, Sonos allows you to integrate accounts from a wide range of music services.

But each company has at least some way of keeping things “open” on their respective speakers. Google Home lets users stream music from countless apps on their phone via Google Cast (or plain old Bluetooth). The Echo also supports Bluetooth playback for services that Alexa doesn’t work with, and Apple’s AirPlay has seen wide adoption among media apps. (Sonos has said it plans to add AirPlay 2 support to the Sonos One, which will allow you to control it with Siri.) But the message from Sonos is clear: the company insists it gives customers more flexibility and less hassle than what’s on offer from “big tech.”

And now it’s getting out in front of the HomePod by offering two Sonos One speakers for $350. That gives new customers an immediate path into multiroom audio right away, whereas Apple has only said the HomePod will do multiroom “later this year.” Does the HomePod outperform a single Sonos One? It’s very possible. But remember that you can stereo pair the two speakers you’d be getting here, and that comparison might not work out so well for Apple.

Last year, Apple began selling Sonos speakers at its retail stores. So far, the Sonos One hasn’t been included in that partnership.