Ikea recently held its annual Democratic Design Days Conference in Sweden and showcased the prototype and end product of it's first collaboration with Sonos. The Symfonisk will be released into Ikea showrooms in the second half of next year.
Ikea's multi room music system powered by Sonos.
The design itself is meant to be used within IKEA furniture (and has been designed to fit inside it's furniture range) or as a shelf itself, turning a speaker into a shelf is pretty cool, I think they are going to rethink what they will do with the power cord though as that's the only part of the design that looks out of place.
Designing an IKEA speaker, powered by Sonos.
The speaker works in an identical manner to the Play 1 and links into the Sonos app and multi room audio ecosystem. Like the Play1 the speaker can be paired with another for stereo sound in your room, IKEA are imagining building in sound systems throughout your IKEA furnished home .
“Many people dream of built-in sound systems, but few can afford it. Our goal is to save space, get rid of cords, make clutter invisible and bring sound and music into the home in a more beautiful way””
From next year the 17 million+ people who visit the 400 IKEA stores worldwide should be able to purchase multi room audio, powered by Sonos, direct from the Superstore. This is massive and shows that IKEA very much has it's eye on the Smart Home, they already have a range of (Philips Hue compatible/hackable) smart lights in stores now.