End of Software Updates for Legacy Products

I assume that if you buy a new iPhone (with the latest software),  which will be the controller for Sonos, then these so called ‘legacy’ customers will find their systems no longer work?

Great that Sonos have single-handedly created so much uncertainty and annoyance.  Who on earth is responsible for their strategy here??

I'm sure I read somewhere that they try and support products for at least 5 years after they stop selling them. You can get the original Play 1 on their website as of today (although I could only find a refurbished one on the UK site but the New Zealand site still had new ones).

Assuming they stick to their guns, they should be ok until at least 2025. I doubt Sonos will commit to any time frame though. 

Trade in: 30% is insulting. 75% is reasonable.

Bitterly dissappointed by receipt of that email.  What makes it worse is that I’ve strongly recommended Sonos to friends and colleagues who now have a load of worthless kit destined for a “Pit and the Pendulum” demise.  I’d been under the illusion Sonos was a forward thinking organisation - clearly a desperate error given they couldn’t  plan for memory or processor upgrades to avoid rapid obsolescence of what’s by any standards a very expensive system.  Unless they come up with a better solution It’s hard to imagine the major sound from Sonos will be anything other than the death knell of the company!  Without a better solution I for one will never purchase another of piece of Sonos kit again.

Quote from August 2018, just after Sonos became a listed company on Nasdaq...

“People are used to buying commodity tech that needs to be replaced, but we’re differentiated because our product persists,” Mike Groeninger, Sonos’ vice president of finance, told Marketwatch.

Well that noble attitude didn’t last long did it? Once Sonos cashed in with a public offering the game was over for us long-term customers. Sad but true.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/04/speaker-maker-sonos-goes-public

Absolutely disgusting this is, on so many levels! 

I reckon you need to address this issue or you are going to lose a lot of customers, maybe that doesn't matter to you for some reason though, because I’m sure if it did, no one would think this move was a good one. 

Who in their right mind will ever buy into this product again unless they have more money than they know what to do with.  People will have saved up hard earned cash to get in on what was such a great product.  You have not only ruined what they have worked hard for, you’ve also made it so that the resale value of anything they own will drop unbelievably! 

I get that equipment gets old, but its not like this stuff is even that old.  Granted I bought it second hand but i only just got my play 5 last year.  The 2nd gen only came out around 2016 didn't it, so before that people were still buying play 5s brand new!?  Surely you can come up with some better way than this!?

As others have said i will definitely not be trading anything up off the back of this, and i certainly wont be buying anything again if this is the way you treat your customers.

I’ve not seen anything that suggests that units will be ‘bricked’, under any circumstances. What’s your source for this?

The danger, I believe, is that non-outdated components of a mixed system get inadvertently updated, and will then no longer work as part of the same system with the outdated devices.

It would appear. That the real danger is that Sonos may not survive this! What happens if the company goes under?

I had been considering buying a Sonos sub, but there is no way I’m going to waste my money on it now.

It is brutal to simply disregard what is supposed to be a premium product by forcing users to abandon them. This is not normal for home appliances, since when did a fridge, washing machine, amplifier etc become legacy. Sonos knew from the beginning that there would be some upkeep, but that should be fairly minimal.

When we went to John Lewis and bought the Sonos we weren’t told - “and by the way, at some random point in the future we’ll make sure that it stops working, but don’t worry - it’s a brilliant product”. I am not impressed and I am sure there are solutions here, but they would require effort from the people at Sonos.

1. One of the arguments is that there isn’t enough storage space to install the software on the older devices. There are so many streaming services, I only use a handful of them. I see a simple solution here whereby users connect to the streaming service with an account, which automatically installs the streaming module onto the speakers. This way, space isn’t wasted with software for streaming services that are not used.
2. Open Source the software so that the online community can continue development of the software, maintaining compatibility. This would take the pressure off Sonos’s development of future products.

I think Sonos needs to seriously think about their announcement and the impact. It will soon make their “premium” product into just an expensive ornament. That’s not cool.

The upgrade offer is a joke too, 30% is a fair amount of money, but the replacement is still expensive. The other issue is that this is blackmail - if you don’t pay up, we’ll ruin your sound system. Absolutely no way am I going to do that - it’s utterly detestable. We upgrade and then how long are they going to support those newer products? I’m not going to take the risk as in a number of months they will ditch that line of products too.

When my existing Sonos products fail to function, it will be good bye to my Sonos ecosystem. It will be interesting what the speaker market does, I do hope that someone will come along and find a solution that fills this hole made by Sonos.

Too late now, the damage is done. When spending large amount of $’s on something you need to trust the company will support it. They have demonstrated that they are quite happy to drop their customers in it at a drop of a hat.

Even if they spin a different story now, tweak their plans etc I’ll always have this in the back of my mind… for me, I couldn't bring myself to spend £x,xxxs of on a company like this. Maybe if their gear was dead cheap I’d take the risk but not at it’s current sale price.