End of Software Support - Clarifications

End of Software Support - Clarifications
Userlevel 7
Badge +26
  • Retired Sonos Staff
  • 12372 replies

We announced yesterday that some of our oldest Sonos products will be moving into a legacy mode in May of 2020. Our commitment is to support products with regular software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting products far longer. 

Here is some public information we’ve shared, gathered into one place to respond to some of your questions in one easy thread, so that people can find the correct information easily.

Beginning in May, software updates and new features from Sonos will only be delivered to systems with only modern products.

After May, systems that include legacy products will continue to work as before - but they will no longer receive software updates or new features. 

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features. 

 

Customers with both legacy and modern products have time to decide what option is best for them. You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features. 

You will also be able to separate your legacy products from your modern products, so that the modern products can still receive updates and new features, and legacy products can still be used separately. We’ll have more information on how to do this in May when you can take that action.

Another option available to all customers with legacy products is to take advantage of the Trade Up program, which allows you to upgrade older Sonos products to modern ones with a 30% discount. Trade Up will be open to customers at any time should they decide to upgrade. 

We recognize this is new for Sonos owners, just as it is for Sonos. We are committed to help you by making options available to you to support the best decision for your home.
 

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.

Update 2/22: A message from our CEO

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn’t exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

 

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos


This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

4256 replies

Badge +1

It is unclear to me why it is necessary to insist that the SonosNet would have to be split or legacy systems and newer systems can't coexist together. I am a software developer, so my background is primarily software, not hardware, but taking a page out of something I've seen Azure do, why not have each device have a list of capabilities that it supports? Then, each feature that is supported has capabilities that it requires. It is simply then a matter of matching capabilities when a feature is executed.

Presumably you already have that to some extent, e.g. a Port can be an input or an output or both, whereas a Play has no inputs.

But for the underlying issue here, it’s overkill. What’s needed is a reduced “Legacy” firmware that just supports getting music from other more-current devices in the network, and playing that music. Not every device needs to be able to connect to Spotify, as long as something on the network can.

In fact, that’s how the system already works. If you have a group of three speakers playing music from Spotify (just as an example), they aren’t making three separate connections to Spotify to get the music. One device is downloading, the others are just playing. The Legacy firmware just needs to assert that it will always be the follower and never handle the connection to the internet. No need to split the network at all, because with the reduced functionality requirements, the Legacy firmware will fit in the available memory of these devices. How do I know? Because it doesn’t require the devices to do anything they don’t do already.

 

Agreed. I think we have seen something similar with Airplay 2 compatibility. I recently purchased a Beam, which is the only Airplay 2 compatible speaker in my setup, yet by grouping can now play music from my iPhone across my home. Only 1 speaker, the Beam is doing the Airplay 2 connection however. 

I cannot describe my anger and disappointment of the arrogant, disrespectful, disloyal way Sonos have completely screwed this up. I bought what was considered to be the best completely integrated home sound system on the planet only to be told that it is no longer going to be integrated but I can have separate bits scattered around my house which don’t talk to each other and somehow I meant to be grateful.

When I spent a great deal of my hard earned cash on Sonos products it was a statement of my trust in the Company and its excellent reputation, it’s difficult to imagine trusting them again. The breathtaking arrogance and disrespect shown by Sonos at the moment is beyond belief and the 30% discount offer to buy again all the things that I’ve already got is derisory and insulting. 
 

Let’s be clear about this, Sonos didn’t sell me individual components to work alone, they sold me an integrated system. Withdrawing this integration is the same as deliberately trashing my system. I feel that I’ve been completely cheated, tricked and conned. Whilst the CEO’s recent communication tries to paper over the cracks caused by his mishandling of this fiasco it does nothing to change the fact that Sonos expect you to be happy with a derisory discount which still leaves a profit margin for them when you re-buy products you’ve already got which are working perfectly well. 

 

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Seconding all the anger here, it's super discouraging to see another great company go public and turn bad.

The only software advances that might exceed computing hardware are the smart features like Alexa. Nothing about multi-room streaming of audio files demands hardware upgrades, ever.

Sonos has effectively abandoned it's core business -- multi-room audio components -- in a vapid  effort to compete in the smart home space.

What I learned from this announcement is what I suspected since the IPO: Sonos isn't trying to be an audio or speaker company anymore. And the CEO message only re-affirmed that. His company relies on its reputation in the audio space; he knows that. But he's abandoning it anyway.

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

It is unclear to me why it is necessary to insist that the SonosNet would have to be split or legacy systems and newer systems can't coexist together. I am a software developer, so my background is primarily software, not hardware, but taking a page out of something I've seen Azure do, why not have each device have a list of capabilities that it supports? Then, each feature that is supported has capabilities that it requires. It is simply then a matter of matching capabilities when a feature is executed.

Presumably you already have that to some extent, e.g. a Port can be an input or an output or both, whereas a Play has no inputs.

But for the underlying issue here, it’s overkill. What’s needed is a reduced “Legacy” firmware that just supports getting music from other more-current devices in the network, and playing that music. Not every device needs to be able to connect to Spotify, as long as something on the network can.

In fact, that’s how the system already works. If you have a group of three speakers playing music from Spotify (just as an example), they aren’t making three separate connections to Spotify to get the music. One device is downloading, the others are just playing. The Legacy firmware just needs to assert that it will always be the follower and never handle the connection to the internet. No need to split the network at all, because with the reduced functionality requirements, the Legacy firmware will fit in the available memory of these devices. How do I know? Because it doesn’t require the devices to do anything they don’t do already.

 

Agreed. I think we have seen something similar with Airplay 2 compatibility. I recently purchased a Beam, which is the only Airplay 2 compatible speaker in my setup, yet by grouping can now play music from my iPhone across my home. Only 1 speaker, the Beam is doing the Airplay 2 connection however. 

 

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability? 

 

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands. 

 

Userlevel 2

I have long been a huge sponsor of the Sonos brand. Recommended it to many friends and family of which all bought them. Now I feel like you made me mislead them. I am sorry but your CEO’s apology is mediocre at best. 
 

Being a CTO myself and founder of various startups all I can say is how deeply disappointed I am that after going public you are becoming the classic example of a failing company reacting to the market in the worst possible way.  You are a product company not a services company. Did some smartass twenty something product manager told you that people would just accept this as if they were upgrading a phone or something ? Wrong market! Fire all those marketers and product folks who pushed for this and promote those who pushed back on it. And if it was an exec of the company he/she should resign. I will be selling all my shares right away.  
 

I spent thousands of dollars in your products and made other people do the same. I spent lots of time in the beta program, nothing prepared me for this. I won’t be buying a Sonos product ever again and will recommend everyone against upgrading unless you fix this. Do a complete reversal and explain to me why and how you can justify that a Sonos bridge or a connect are becoming obsolete.  I could care less about not having Alexa embedded in my darn speakers. I didn’t buy them for that purpose. Stop making stuff up and acknowledge that you are doing this to boost your sales. The rest is bs. 

Way to lose your best product advocates!

 

And so it begins

retailers-move-to-dump-sonos

Sounds like Sonos is indeed under pressure - and combined with having an unhealthy tone towards their partners and a technological base that is not modern, they have now begun doing such absurd things like we have seen recently. Certainly a sign of desperation from a company that doesn’t know what to do.

No disrespect, but what the hell is “Channel News”? To be very frank, that was one of the most poorly written and worded pieces I’ve read on the web in a bit… and one has to be forgiving of web pieces. I’ve seen posts here in the forum put together better (not mine, mind you, but they’re here :relaxed: ). Just had a strange air to it as well.

Userlevel 4
Badge +4

No doubt you’ve all received the email from Spencer - says nothing more than his first and last statement previously discussed on here.  No doubt it’s been sent to all customers not just those contributing here.

 

Howver many valid points have been raised by the community which are worthy of comment if only to confirm or otherwise that they are working on various attributes or not.  There would even be comfort if they said they couldn’t be sure that there is a solution to continue with all house grouping across legacy and modern units. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

 

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability? 

 

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands. 

 

 

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

It is unclear to me why it is necessary to insist that the SonosNet would have to be split or legacy systems and newer systems can't coexist together. I am a software developer, so my background is primarily software, not hardware, but taking a page out of something I've seen Azure do, why not have each device have a list of capabilities that it supports? Then, each feature that is supported has capabilities that it requires. It is simply then a matter of matching capabilities when a feature is executed.

Presumably you already have that to some extent, e.g. a Port can be an input or an output or both, whereas a Play has no inputs.

But for the underlying issue here, it’s overkill. What’s needed is a reduced “Legacy” firmware that just supports getting music from other more-current devices in the network, and playing that music. Not every device needs to be able to connect to Spotify, as long as something on the network can.

In fact, that’s how the system already works. If you have a group of three speakers playing music from Spotify (just as an example), they aren’t making three separate connections to Spotify to get the music. One device is downloading, the others are just playing. The Legacy firmware just needs to assert that it will always be the follower and never handle the connection to the internet. No need to split the network at all, because with the reduced functionality requirements, the Legacy firmware will fit in the available memory of these devices. How do I know? Because it doesn’t require the devices to do anything they don’t do already.

 

Agreed. I think we have seen something similar with Airplay 2 compatibility. I recently purchased a Beam, which is the only Airplay 2 compatible speaker in my setup, yet by grouping can now play music from my iPhone across my home. Only 1 speaker, the Beam is doing the Airplay 2 connection however. 

 

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability? 

 

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands. 

 

I’ve been on Sonos for 6 (7?) years, and I know precisely the divide… e.g. roughly 3 years ago (a bit less) is when voice integration began and the controller updates began taking drastic turns from this historically awesome versions. I mention this to contrast the past couple years with those earlier ones (for me personally). I bought a Play:1 in 2014 on a whim. No one told me to, I’d read a bit about them and seen the adverts a small amount but mostly I just wanted to check it out because it seemed different.
And. It. Was. To-date it’s still an experience I remember. It the *very* first time (and I’ve had a technical background in hardware/software for 2 decades) I’d tried out a product and the software/hardware combination just worked. It setup easily. Navigation and playback was seamless. The range was amazing. The integrations were amazing. I immediately bought another Play:1 and a Connect for my main audio system and didn’t look back. Those first 3 or 4 years were fantastic…. then some hiccups as things began to change. And change again. And software problems. And controller redesigns. And voice integration that was more like alpha than beta. And now the entire line took a different direction away from true audio,  and now…. here we are.

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

Indeed…. a way of true audio, not consumer convenience electronics. In my opinion they chose the wrong market to try to be competitive in and have abandoned, little by little, the one in which they could have excelled. 

Userlevel 1

Dear Sonos,

I purchased my first Sonos when you were a fledgeling Company buying into your vision at that time of a modern way to play music and invested heavily >£1,500 to get multi-room music system and to also incorporate my music system into your modern system with a bridge etc.  I invested in several hand controllers each over £200 which over the course of time they first broke down with terrible screen problems and then the software stopped supporting the unit so it became the first legacy your produced. The writing was already on the wall and I should have realised then that my loyalty and hard-earned cash to support this company was going to end in tears and this company had become too big to care any longer on its loyal, faithful early hardcore investors that made this company. 

More than 5 years on and now you are going to destroy my system by calling half of it legacy without updates to support.  Remember I have already seen it with the various controllers going in the early days so a written email after the event does not fill me up with confidence as it was obviously a knee jerk reaction to thousands of very unhappy “investors” in this company.

I have not purchased a Sonos device for several years based on this event coming to reality and now it will take a great deal of convincing to believe in this company again and ever purchase/upgrade and spend my hard-earned cash.  I have lived through the hard times in the early stages of bug fixes technical break downs but always until yesterday believe and supported and championed the system to my family, friends and colleagues convincing many to also go down this route.  But that loyalty has been broken and will now take exceptional skills and offers to convince me that it is still worth investing in these products for the future and not having to face another huge legacy bill every 5 years or so. 

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

 

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability? 

 

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands. 

 

 

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

 

This sounds like an excuse.

nothing has changed the way you play sound files or streams.

Maybe part of the future heavy lifting shouldn’t be on a playing device in the first place because earlier or later you going to run into the same issues. If you keep it on the devices you produce expensive throwaway gadgets with a very limited lifetime. Might be time to restructure how the software is working. But the way it looks the new model seems to be planned obsolescence to sell more units. For a single device this might be OK. If you have your house outfitted with multiple devices I would assume there is a local server in play one way or another with all the computing power you need. From multi room audio to throwaway gadgets … :wink:

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

us.audiopro.com/

Sonos, this is unacceptable. You lost me as a customer and my trust in your products. You would obviously do this again in the future. Sonos great idea badly executed.

SONOS, you are a bunch of greedy stupid pr**ks. 
I have spent some $3600AU, plus on my recommendation, 3 other family members have spent similar amounts and we ALL own your so called legacy models. Thanks for shafting us all. 
 

What do I expect moving forward? Personally I expect you to continue to support my hardware and software into the future (that means at least 10years from now). I expect either a separate app for my 100% legacy system or an app that can allow me to select what features function or not; airplay 2 for example that meant I had to stop screen mirroring on Apple TV if I wanted to continue to use lock screen functionality on my iPhone. 
But most of all I simply want the system I bought to continue to function as it did when I bought it, nothing more, nothing less. 
What you do next will determine if I ever purchase another SONOS product in the future. But rest assured, I will be keeping my recommendations to myself from this point forward. You have crapped in your nest and lost the support of a huge percentage of your existing customers.
Really stupid move guys. 

I’ve seen the emails on this and I must say I’m extremely disappointed. 
I’ll be putting my Sonos products on eBay and moving to a different platform... 

 

I assume this is being driven by smart speaker technology. Well I don’t care about that, all I want is for all components, new and old, to work together regardless of age..

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

1. The idea of deliberately scrapping a functioning speaker and stripping it for parts horrifies me. 

2. The trade up offer doesn't do it for me.   After the 30% discount, the newer products are still expensive.   And there is no clarity at all on what enhancements will come when Sonos is freed from the constraints imposed by the need to maintain backward compatibility.  Based on enhancements over recent years, I'm not sure that the planned improvements will be of any interest to me.  Voice control for example feels mainly like a gimmick to me, but one with serious privacy concerns.  Removing the 65,000 track limit on the other hand would be a positive for me.  So financially it makes sense to continue using what I have until it stops working.  And when that day comes, I will look for the best replacement, which doesn't have to be Sonos.  

3. I'll wait and see how things develop. I have a Connect and some Play:1s.  I don't need to group the Connect with the others, so the separate systems setup may work ok for me, although I can appreciate it's a showstopper for many other users.  I had toyed with the idea of getting a One so that I could play things like BBC Sounds from my phone to any of the other speakers.   I also thought about upgrading to a Play 5 in the family room.   Both of those ideas will go on hold now, maybe even indefinitely.  After this week,  the level of new sales to existing customers is surely going to take a hammering.   But then I suppose Sonos has the statistics and knows what percentage of those existing customers did or didn't get this week's email.  

4. There is quite an amount of anger on here.  It's very understandable, given people have made big investments.  A number of users seem to be making a big effort to hurt the company with bad ratings on Amazon and elsewhere.  But from the many reviews I've read over the last few years of Sonos and the alternatives, it does seem to be that in terms of audio quality and reliability, Sonos is still one of the very best products in the wireless speaker market.  And it looks like most or all of the competitors' control apps are poor.  If Sonos were to be bought by Apple or Google, or to go out of business, the end of life date for all Sonos products would be much earlier than if Sonos continues to grow.  And then we'd be forced to switch to a poorer setup.  

Badge +1

 

Maybe they lack the ability to develop the software? It's not impossible but maybe they just can't do it reliably and decided to segment for stability? 

 

The hardware has always been solid however I've had Sonos for about 3 years and it feels like I've been on a beta release the whole time. I suspect they are rushing things to market to complete with bigger brands. 

 

 

It isn’t just “develop the software,” that part is simple, the hard part is “fit it in 32 MB of memory” which is why Sonos has had to drop features to add new ones and had to skip adding ones they would really like to have added.

Sadly the hardware, while being solid, wasn’t designed for the way the music industry changed. Sonos realized this fairly early on and added memory to the products to reduce the bottleneck for the newer stuff.

That leaves us where we are today with the oldest Sonos tapped out on resources and holding back a lot of stuff folks want. I’s say Sonos could have gone at this in a far better way but it had to happen at some point or it would be the end of new features and fixes for problems that just won’t fit in the 32 MB.

 

This sounds like an excuse.

nothing has changed the way you play sound files or streams.

Maybe part of the future heavy lifting shouldn’t be on a playing device in the first place because earlier or later you going to run into the same issues. If you keep it on the devices you produce expensive throwaway gadgets with a very limited lifetime. Might be time to restructure how the software is working. But the way it looks the new model seems to be planned obsolescence to sell more units. For a single device this might be OK. If you have your house outfitted with multiple devices I would assume there is a local server in play one way or another with all the computing power you need. From multi room audio to throwaway gadgets … :wink:

 

I agree. I don’t dispute that 32mb limits the ability to introduce new features not envisioned in the past and that are required to be in place to meet the demands of the future. I get this. However, the technology model of the speaker needing these features, as opposed to a dongle feeding to the speaker, allowing the speaker to be agnostic, seems to be where the legacy products have met their Waterloo and are creating the bottleneck and Sonos and its loyal users a headache. I don’t know if a suitable solution can be found, when the actual hardware is the limiting factor. Hindsight tells us we all should have purchased ZP90’s and hooked them up to our favourite speakers and then we would have only needed to replace the ZP90 dongle as it became obsolete. We fell for the marketing hype and now technology and the demand for newer innovations in a competitive market have shown the fallacy at the heart of this Sonos model. Their speaker products are more than just speakers and they are time limited in terms of ability to absorb developments, as a result. They are more akin to mobile phones and pc’s and are sensitive to the same demands that those products are. Their situation is more compelling, because of the whole home audio requirement. If these were stand-alone products and not part of an integrated environment, then the impact would be significantly less and software solutions could be found, however requiring both old and new hardware to operate together in grouped situations, I suspect is also one of the fundamental issues creating technological solutions. It will be interesting to see what Sonos do here and if in fact they can keep limited memory legacy and higher memory new products together. 

Userlevel 2

What I find hard to accept is that they kept selling me more Play1s when they knew the limitations. Maybe I will keep the Connet amp, and 6 Play1s, return a recent Play5, sell a Beam. That way I will be all legacy mode with not much regret.

How does this sound?

I will look for a simple old fashioned alternative to rebuild a reliable system.

Userlevel 3

I've just received the email update. Glad to hear your now clarifying the situation. 

I do wonder what has happened to sonos as a company who I assumed was focused on the needs of their loyal customers.

I fear you've done an awful lot to damage that reputation and I'm not sure if the majority of your previously loyal client base will trust you anymore. This may be the most damaging decision sonos board never properly thought through before imposing.

If like you say previously, you wont know until may if the questions can be answered as to if the legacy and new equipment can work together etc then it shows the level of contempt sonos holds for its customers by announcing the changes before you've got the answers to the questions.

You have given yourself 5 months to get the answers when this should have already been considered and a solution found. Theres a very god chance your going to see a knock on drop in new sales as your no longer trusted until that's resolved. I your customers actually stay loyal at all. 

Poor decision making at the top guys. Have a word with yourselves. 

 

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

 

This sounds like an excuse.

nothing has changed the way you play sound files or streams.

Maybe part of the future heavy lifting shouldn’t be on a playing device in the first place because earlier or later you going to run into the same issues. If you keep it on the devices you produce expensive throwaway gadgets with a very limited lifetime. Might be time to restructure how the software is working. But the way it looks the new model seems to be planned obsolescence to sell more units. For a single device this might be OK. If you have your house outfitted with multiple devices I would assume there is a local server in play one way or another with all the computing power you need. From multi room audio to throwaway gadgets … :wink:

 

I agree. I don’t dispute that 32mb limits the ability to introduce new features not envisioned in the past and that are required to be in place to meet the demands of the future. I get this. However, the technology model of the speaker needing these features, as opposed to a dongle feeding to the speaker, allowing the speaker to be agnostic, seems to be where the legacy products have met their Waterloo and are creating the bottleneck and Sonos and its loyal users a headache. I don’t know if a suitable solution can be found, when the actual hardware is the limiting factor. Hindsight tells us we all should have purchased ZP90’s and hooked them up to our favourite speakers and then we would have only needed to replace the ZP90 dongle as it became obsolete. We fell for the marketing hype and now technology and the demand for newer innovations in a competitive market have shown the fallacy at the heart of this Sonos model. Their speaker products are more than just speakers and they are time limited in terms of ability to absorb developments, as a result. They are more akin to mobile phones and pc’s and are sensitive to the demands that those products are. 

 

It seems they are more focusing on the mobile/gadget market. A market with a lot of competition and cheaper options. Just look at Amazon and their nice discounts on a regular basis.

Will go cancel the deactivation for those that bought a new speaker under the trade in scheme as a result of your email.?

If i was offered 50% - 60% discount on a new product, this would be a position i would feel was a benefit to the Sonos company and the customer, however at the moment with 30% upgrade, i am stopping building my system and looking at alternative options. Sonos should use this experience to build loyalty and encourage customers to ‘buy into’ new product, make the offer ‘so good’ we all buy in!. make it a sales point that as a customer you will receive amazing discounts on upgrades. Come on Patrick, build the company loyalty, make more units, reduce production cost via volume manufacturing. 

How about an annual upgrade offer, when a product is purchased at £500 you can take out an annual upgrade package, £40 a year for 5 years then Sonos replace the unit FOC. Good for the customer, good for Sonos and the only company to do this?. Just an option to the perfect solution of making all units work until they fail due to old age.

I agree. I don’t dispute that 32mb limits the ability to introduce new features not envisioned in the past and that are required to be in place to meet the demands of the future. I get this. However, the technology model of the speaker needing these features, as opposed to a dongle feeding to the speaker, allowing the speaker to be agnostic, seems to be where the legacy products have met their Waterloo and are creating the bottleneck and Sonos and its loyal users a headache. I don’t know if a suitable solution can be found, when the actual hardware is the limiting factor. Hindsight tells us we all should have purchased ZP90’s and hooked them up to our favourite speakers and then we would have only needed to replace the ZP90 dongle as it became obsolete. We fell for the marketing hype and now technology and the demand for newer innovations in a competitive market have shown the fallacy at the heart of this Sonos model. Their speaker products are more than just speakers and they are time limited in terms of ability to absorb developments, as a result. They are more akin to mobile phones and pc’s and are sensitive to the demands that those products are. 

This is unfortunately true of IoT as a whole unfortunately, but we’re seeing it here and now as Sonos is effectively the biggest and fattest canary that effectively flew to the bottom of the mine years ago. I think consumers are waking up and realizing this fact. Many are all-in and gung-ho but that is for one-off devices that are high-dollar (tablets, mobiles), or collections of devices that are relatively inexpensive (power outlets, light-bulbs, door-bells). Sonos is a collection interconnected light-bulbs that cost as much as a premium mobile, each. This approach was flawed to begin with, but to be fair difficult to predict accurately. 
IoT has another think coming… it’s coming soon.

Userlevel 3
Badge

If i was offered 50% - 60% discount on a new product, this would be a position i would feel was a benefit to the Sonos company and the customer, however at the moment with 30% upgrade, i am stopping building my system and looking at alternative options. Sonos should use this experience to build loyalty and encourage customers to ‘buy into’ new product, make the offer ‘so good’ we all buy in!. make it a sales point that as a customer you will receive amazing discounts on upgrades. Come on Patrick, build the company loyalty, make more units, reduce production cost via volume manufacturing. 

How about an annual upgrade offer, when a product is purchased at £500 you can take out an annual upgrade package, £40 a year for 5 years then Sonos replace the unit FOC. Good for the customer, good for Sonos and the only company to do this?. Just an option to the perfect solution of making all units work until they fail due to old age.

I do not want to pay a premium price only to pay a premium subscription fee on top. To me that is not a solution.