I actively tell friends and family to not try to imitate my home setup after this app garbage, where as I know specifically of a few friends who got into SONOS based directly on my recommendation and my demonstrations of the system.
But surely the main reason for declining sales is the app.
And not just the app itself but the fact that despite mounting criticism from the community they didn't immediately revert it. Thus demonstrating that they don't really care about their own, up until that point, very loyal customers.
Even as a Sonos owner and former fan who detests the app, I doubt the app is the reason for declining sales. Competition is.
Sonos has been around for many years now. When it launched, smartphones weren’t dominant. To control a Sonos you had to buy a controller specifically for it. It had its own wireless networking because WiFi wasn’t dominant. To use it with WiFi you needed to buy a separate bridge.
Online music services weren’t a thing like they are now. Music collections were on your local hard drive.
Back then the main competition for Sonos was paying a pro to hard-wire a speaker system into your house. I saw one of these about five years ago. Built into the wall in the kitchen was a cassette tape deck.
All that has changed. Now there are wireless speakers from JBL, Apple, Amazon, Bose, Google, and at least a dozen others. There’s Bluetooth. There’s AirPlay.
The Sonos app was ok for its time, but it’s an outdated model now. But at least the app used to be good at controlling Sonos. Now it’s not even great for that.
Without that outdated app model, there’s no reason to buy Sonos. Just pick from…anybody else. Many are cheaper and sound just as good. They don’t rely on an app, which is good-just use Airplay or Bluetooth.
As bad as the app is, it’s not a trigger of the decline of Sonos. Is just a symptom of it. The company has no future. Thus its release of headphones that don’t even integrate well with the Sonos system. These are just as pointless as its speakers.
Sonos makes great hardware. Those little mini speaker voice assistant things aren’t even in the same ball park. If they stick to their target audience they’ll be fine.
The mismatch here is Sonos’ owners want Sonos’ shares’ returns to at least keep up with SP500, and Sonos’ “target” audience wants speakers that sound great. And I don’t know that that is possible, given the market for speakers.
> Those little mini speaker voice assistant things aren’t even in the same ball park. If they stick to their target audience they’ll be fine.
Sonos' product is convenience, experience, and decent audio, in that order. Mini speaker voice assistant things equal/beat them in 2 of those categories, and high-end audio brands beat them in the third, leaving them holding the bad in the middle.
I use Sonos with Apple Music. Sonos has always been worse than Apple's app at browsing and searching (no idea who to blame for this, not the point), but I'd still use because it freed my phone/computer from the streaming duties. The speakers would handle it all once I got the stream started, and I wouldn't need to worry about being in range.
Also, multiroom. AirPlay does it OK. BT does not.
Now I'm using AirPlay, because it's working more reliably than the Sonos app. Which is a surprise, because it used to be the other way around.
If Sonos goes away, I guess I'll switch to HomePods? I'd rather not, given the prices and reliability, but I really can't imagine going to BT.
This is a more reasonable take. A single bad app launch cannot be the sole cause of a company falling apart to the point where they need to fire the CEO.
Boards are typically loyal to their CEOs (if the stock and revenue are performing well). They'll never fire a CEO who's coming out of a double-digit percentage growth last quarter.
Thus, the reason he fell out of the boards' favor is the low performance primarily and this was the last straw indeed.
It's hard for me to believe this is the main reason, but I'd love to be shown otherwise.
My instinct is to think it's fuel on a fire that was already burning - declining sales across the market, smart speakers taking a big slice out of Sonos' pie, and missing the boat on new markets (headphones) … and then a bad app release being the straw that broke the camel's back.
As CEO of a public company you get about 3 quarters down before you're out.