Most users ‘stream’ music from a service, according to various reports from Sonos, but since the controller is merely a window as to what is happening at the speaker level, your question might be reworded to ‘do more people use a controller on a laptop or a mobile device’ or possibly ‘do more people store music locally on a mobile device, a computer, or an NAS?’

For the first of those reworded questions, I think Sonos stopping further updates to the desktop controllers is a good indication of what their numbers are saying. As to the second, they’ve suggested that the vast majority of users are streaming, and not using local storage at all. But it might be an interesting comparison. I certainly have found an ‘always on’ NAS to be the best choice for my local music needs.

Thanks for reply. The reason I asked was because I was getting sound from only right speaker, called Sonos, and they had me reinstall from iphone, said couldn’t be done from laptop (I have all my music on Amazon ), and that fixed the problem. Only reason Ive been using laptop for playback was assumption that better sound card would help.

Ah, understood. The desktop clients don’t have any “set up” ability, they stripped that out back when they stated that they were going into maintenance mode on them, just applying bug fixes. Setting up a new speaker/system does indeed require a mobile controller. 

I still use a desktop client every day, however, to control my speakers for playback. In fact, the Mac client is currently open in front of me. It’s just when I get a new speaker that I need to go back to the iOS client. 

Sonos doesn’t use the pc/phone sound card so that should not matter.

Thanks much for replies- is there somewhere on the site explains exactly  how Sonos works as oppsed to “conventional” home AV systems?

Maybe in the FAQ section. Maybe: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/how-sonos-works

Pretty simple really, you have one or more Sonos controllers that control the Sonos devices.

The main Sonos devices, at the command from the controller, connect to a music or sound source and play it.

Sub and Surround Sonos devices connect to a primary Sonos device and play what it sends them.

You can join multiple main Sonos devices to play the audio stream you are playing on another Sonos.