Trailing Sonos’ plight of creating a disagreement with Google and Amazon along with filing lawsuit against the tech giant, Google, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, Dave Limp, responded to the allegations.
Amazon’s Dave Limp, in an interview, reflected on the allegation that was made by Sonos against the company. Though Sonos chose to sue Google and not Amazon, citing constraints on resources — Amazon was roped into the discussion anyway. However, Sonos has accused Google as well as Amazon of stealing its patents on wireless speaker technology and called out the tech giants as ‘bullies’ of the IT-sphere, pushing smaller companies around and even driving them out of business.
Dave Limp, in the interview, said that Amazon still considered Sonos a valuable partner with whom it retains close ties and hopes to continue doing business with. Limp said that Amazon, on their part, has been working hard to integrate Alexa on Sonos’ devices. He further adds that Sonos and Amazon, since the incident, have met, held meetings and talked over the phone several times. On what? Limp refused to divulge the information but said that the relationship between the two is much better now. He said, “If you called Patrick right now, I would hope he would tell you that our partnership is healthy.”
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When asked what Amazon felt was the reason for Sonos’ gloom, Dave responded stating that the story, reported first by The New York Times, has been updated since. On our analysis of the update, it’s safe to say that the initial story has been sneakily tweaked – just hours after release. He says Amazon’s efforts are user-centric, looking to provide the users with several voice-assistant platforms to choose from. Though Dave Limp, in 2017, during the launch of Sonos One, nearly pulled Amazon out of the event when he found out Google would be sharing the stage too (not at the same time); he, in a way, defended Google by stating that the two do not need to ‘bully’ nor require ‘exclusivity’ to market its products. The two tech giants are loved by the consumers, which is reflective of the hard work Amazon and Google put in or else people have the option to shop at outlets other than theirs.
Limp said that all companies aim at making their product unique from the competition and during the pursuit of which company interests, regardless of their size, may clash. He compliments the previous CEO of Sonos, John MacFarlane, by stating how visionary he was, which incited Amazon to partner with the company. Dave is optimistic that Sonos and Patrick Spence, the present CEO of Sonos, can establish an individualistic identity for the company, a differentiating factor which the customers may find appealing.
He concluded the interview by stating that Amazon has not violated any patent rights, in fact, Amazon was the first company to develop a wireless, voice-operated speaker, independently and from scratch.
