Dear Sonos,
You have a New Coke, or more recent example CNN+, level of self-induced crisis with your recent App update killing your core value proposition - The Sonos Ecosystem.
This is beyond access/search to Personal Music Libraries or some systems not connecting, but by purposefully removing basic functionality like Queue, Sonos Playlists, Segmented Favorite, Search Personal Music, Mute, TV/Music Source Switch, Alarm, Sleep and others - you’ve demonstrated a lack of awareness on the importance of trust as the guardian of your company’s ecosystem.
Apple is a dominant example of a stable (and expanding) ecosystem driving consumer confidence to invest in new hardware as well as upgrade hardware for want, not need.
Mistakes happen, even by industry leading companies. It takes “courage” to admit them and do the right thing, not double-down and pat yourself on the back for a self-induced deadline (Q2 Earnings with CEO Update) to disrupt your ecosystem over the launch of a new product (headphones).
Like New Coke, keep the new App on the shelves, but time to bring back Gold S2 App (Classic Coke) on the App store today.
Don’t wait weeks/months to add updates to return your ecosystem to what it was last week. Trust erodes quickly and is hard to earn back, especially when you need future consumer spending on new hardware or upgraded hardware to survive.
It takes “courage” to admit a mistake and make things right. It demonstrates you can be trusted as guardian to a value proposition and deserve consumers money and time invested in your products.