Is it time for another hardware controller?

Sonos stopped selling the CR100 and 200s years before they went public.  It’s quite a stretch to claim that they were removed for corporate profits with that sort of foresight.  The obvious answer is that people just weren’t buying the controllers since they could just use the phone and tablets they already owned for control.

While part of the recent success has been due to reduce costs, they have increased sales revenue pretty significantly as well. 

As established by top tier support, it’s NOT my WiFi (latest high-end router), all other devices blazing fast, testing confirms no wifi traffic issues.  

Using latest iOS 14.x on less-than 2yr old apple phones/pad, Fire HD tablets. 

S1 on SAME system was much faster to load, refresh, etc.  

Support knows there are wide-spread issues with S2 lagging, glad yours doesn’t. 

Danny, always the die-hard Sonos supporter and I do appreciate your thoughts.  But I beg to differ on why the CRs were dropped.  Sonos made claim that these would NOT keep up with current hardware/firmware changes coming down the pike - not due to slow sales (oh and something about them catching on FIRE - which was retracted shortly after).   And my comments about going public was NOT tied to the CR issues, just observations about Sonos and tech companies in general after 10+ years with Sonos products/support/testing/community comments and a lifetime career in tech. 

Thanks for interesting comments.  This has strayed from the controller topic, but I’ll bite on the comments from kassey22000:

I see where you are coming from, but I’m much less negative than you are about the company, even if you are riffing on some material that I put out there.  Their focus was always on making money and growth, as a for-profit company.  That focus let them lose money on their first generation of customers, which I was happy to be a part of, in order to be able to make better stuff and grow, which they have done.  And they recognize the value of a happy customer base, as they have repeatedly said that their best sales channel is word of mouth from existing customers selling friends on Sonos (as I have done, see above). 

That said, there is a natural tension between making amazing new stuff and keeping old customers happy by making those improvements backward-compatible, and at some point that tension hits a breaking point, which is interesting to watch for.  It hit that breaking point with the CR100-bricking in 2018, and with the S1/S2 split last year.  (Now, for example, how do they get S1 customers like me to buy the new Mini-Move or Super-Sub or whatever other new gadget they put on the market, when its incremental benefit is outweighed by the incremental loss of capability in previously purchased gear, the opposite of the earlier exponential gain that Sonos customers got from buying more Sonos stuff?)  To repeat my point above, I agree with you that Sonos’s management has seemed to put less emphasis on the backward-compatible side of that dichotomy in the last few years than they did previously.

Finally you raised compensation.  In that regard, though this may be an unpopular opinion here, I think Sonos warrants commendation for NOT having super highly paid executives, by (admittedly ridiculous and out of control) US corporate standards.  Compare, eg, the CEO’s base salary, $550,000, to that of peers, many of whom (aside from Warren Buffet and his $100,000 salary) get several times that.  Sonos execs may be currently getting rich because the stock price increased by about 5X in less than 12 months, but in my book they have earned such good fortune.

Full disclosure, I am a small Sonos stockholder as well as a longtime customer.  I think reading their investor materials helps make me a smarter customer.  (Also this works as a sort of hedge; if Sonos gets acquired by, say, Apple in, say, three years, the sure-to-result decrease in value and usefulness of my audio gear will be offset by the gain in value of the Sonos stock!)

The CR100 was discontinued in 2009 (support dropped in 2018), the CR200 in 2012 (still supported in S1).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos

These are the reasons Sonos stopped supporting the CRs.  It’s not the reason they stopped selling them.  They stopped selling them long after they stopped   If CRs were highly desired by consumers, I have no doubt that Sonos would be selling a CR300 or 400 these days.  As well, at least some of Sonos multiroom audio competitors would be selling controllers like the CRs, but to my knowledge it doen’t exist.  Seems like that would be an easy way to win over customers, if customers wanted them.

I personally don’t care whether Sonos makes controllers or not, other than the fact that I want the company to be successful so that they continue to make good products and support what line of speakers.  That said, the fact that you essentially needed to have a controller originally is what kept me from getting the original ZPs.  I could afford $400 for the Connect:Amp, but not another $400 for a controller to go with it.  Once Sonos had the app controller, I was on board.

Like many people, myself included, we think we can easily predict a company’s future based on what we see.  Assuming we understand the market better than Sonos can.  I was not happy when Sonos laid off some good people, and I thought we would have seen the effect of it by now.  Sonos is actually doing better than they have before.  Maybe you’re right and it’s going to eventually catch up to them, but right now Sonos is just doing better.

That’s a completely different debate  though.  The question raised by OP was whether it made sense for Sonos to make it’s own controller again, not about how long Sonos should support products that it no longer sells.

Danny - yes, agree.  Lots of good points in here.

Interesting discussion here. I am a little amused because I am “hoping” for a controller from Sonos also. My amusement is because I was going in the opposite direction, much more simple and limited to one specific function. You see, I use an Android phone so the TruePlay feature is unavailable to me. The controller I was looking to Sonos for would perform that singular function. What would it take? Maybe two buttons, a speaker, a mic and some wifi hardware. No need for a screen or any other controls. Just perform the Trueplay tasks. Could it be ready by February 30th?

February 30th of what year?  What you’re asking for isn’t a controller at all and not really the subject of this thread, though it’s been asked for before.  Without knowing what all goes into performing Trueplay tuning, other than known mic characteristics and portability, it’s hard to say who plausible this could be.   We know that the Roam has auto trueplay, so it seems like it could be done, but we don’t know that auto trueplay is the same as trueplay, or that it would work for a home theatre setup.  We know that other manufacturers can use a cheap stationary mic for tuning, but Sonos version of that is clearly not the same thing.