OPINION: With news that Sonos has apparently cancelled its streaming TV box, where does the company go from here?
I’m not totally sure.
I don’t agree with my colleague that the streaming box (codenamed Pinewood) was destined to fail. It is adjacent to Sonos’ wheelhouse, and by the sounds of it, would have integrated well with other Sonos kit.
It’s not a niche product, but if rumours were to be believed, it would have hit the market at a premium price, which in turn would have made the size of the market it was looking to carve up pretty small.
What Sonos needed was a mass market product, or at least something close to that, and Pinewood was unlikely to have delivered it. It doesn’t mean that the step into video won’t happen, but I don’t think now would have been the best time to do so in light of what happened in 2024.
Where to next?
It follows a year of many ups and downs that, in the end, diminished the reputation Sonos had, a reputation it’s been working ever since to restore. It started with the app debacle, which took one of the best examples of a streaming app and turned it into something that could barely function.
But it wasn’t just the software that seemed off. The hardware wasn’t quite right either.
The Roam 2 was highly anticipated by the this writer, but the launch was quiet and the speaker itself was mostly unchanged from before, aside from a few cosmetic differences and a change to the battery life.
The Ace headphones were solid, though the lack of integration with the Sonos app and other products was a bit baffling. Sales have failed to pick up since its launch – I’ve seen at least two people wear the headphones since it went on sale.
guThat’s not to say that the Ace won’t eventually find its footing. It takes a while for premium headphones to sell, as it did with the AirPods Max and Sony WH-1000XM5, two pairs of headphones I see worn by people almost every day. But Sonos seemed to think it would hit the ground running, and it overestimated both the demand and the quality of the established competition it was up against.
The success is in the Arc Ultra soundbar, even though Sonos seemed a little cautious with its unveiling, it’s been received well. But even though you think the Sonos name is ubiquitous with soundbars, Samsung is the real king in the soundbar market as it topped global sales for the 11th (eleventh!) year in a row.
With seemingly no product launches on the dock for this year, Sonos has the whole of 2025 to recalibrate. Perhaps it has designs on pumping out another speaker or soundbar, but that is inherently the problem Sonos faces at the moment. More of the same, rather than something genuinely new.
Ace was not the success Sonos wanted it to be out the gate, but after pushing into outdoor audio, it needed to keep that run going with something that stretched the Sonos brand beyond what it’s known for.
No retreat, no surrender
Sonos has its back up against the wall. The reports coming out of the company suggest morale and confidence are low, but it needs to keep pushing forward.
It can’t sit on its haunches, and it can’t preach to the converted either. If Sonos is to remain among the top dogs in the market, it has to change its outlook.
I think for the last few years, it’s pushed its own worldview onto customers, and that’s something a lot of big brands do. From Apple, to Samsung and Sony, they want you in their ecosystem and to never cross the boundaries to go somewhere else.
I think Sonos need to be more accommodating.
More accommodating to the customers by giving them what they need rather than giving them what Sonos thinks they should have. And it can be small things. Full DTS compatibility? Yes please. A HDMI input for your soundbars? That’s overdue and not something I need a streaming box to offer either.
There’s some soul searching to be done but I’m reasonably confident that Sonos have the nous to figure out its ailments.
To bring out a Rocky quote, it’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and still move forward. Words for any company to live by, and words that Sonos needs to embrace.
