End of Software Support - Clarifications

Congratulations Sonos, you made the headlines in the Times and the Guardian in the UK.

Anyone interested in crowd funding a Hercules so we can airdrop a few tonnes of 'legacy' speakers onto the Sonos headquarters in Santa Barbara, California? 

Since buying into Sonos in 2007, I have used only two of the new features: I have connected Spotify and I use the iphone app. Haven’t needed more and do not need more to be perfectly happy with the system. I wonder what remarkable services they are going to add to warrant me scrapping half my system. I doubt I’ll use a single one.   

This might be a perfect opportunity for Sonos competitors to scoop up disgruntled customers.  Blue sound, whoever else:  if you’re listening, give angry customers a good trade in exchange for jumping ship and you might find a real growth opportunity out of Sonos’ historic blunder!!

I was thinking of expanding my Sonos even further with a Subwoofer, Soundbar, and the new Move. Now I will reconsider as I would be afraid the soundbar and subwoofer which hasn’t been updated for many years will be “outdated” before I know it. Time to look into Bose or another product line. Sorry Sonos up until now I have lived your products. I don’t know who thought planned obsolescence would help sell any new product should be fired. 

Good bye and good luck Sonos hope you stock continues to crash.

I have spent the last few days taking this news in and first of all, I honestly felt sadness and disappointment. Speaking from my own experience with Sonos equipment over 7 years and a few years before that researching the topic, my set up has worked really well in all respects.
Over the years I have recommended your speakers and set up to countless family and friends – who have also gone on, after doing their own due diligence, and paid decent sums of money on your products and been pleased with the results. I feel gutted to have recommended Sonos now.

However, my feelings have now turned to frustration and anger.

I have invested in 10x devices, of various sorts, and now find that 3 items have transferred to ‘legacy’ status. I agree with so many of the comments on this forum post and like many others purchased your equipment based on the attraction of having whole house audio coverage and this is the way we listen to our music. If I choose to separate out the system into ‘current’ and ‘legacy’ it will just not work in my open plan environment in a seamless manner and I will NOT be going down that route – I want to be able to use all my speakers together not separately.

So, I will be forced, come May 2020, to retain the software at that point, no future updates and things in the short term may well run as they do now – for a while.

All I am asking for is that the ‘legacy’ items just play music with the other speakers as a whole house system – since that is all I need them to do and were bought to do. I totally understand that other whizz bang options of voice control etc. will not be possible on these ‘legacy’ devices.

But, and this is what concerns me more, I can expect a reduction in functionality, although no detail on those reductions until May. as your press release mentions:
 

Only a month or so ago my Samsung tablet and my wife’s tablet – both running the Sonos app - became obsolete as a controller (Android 6). I run my digital music library through a NAS drive connected to the network – took hundreds of hours to transfer the physical media (LP’s & CD’s) onto it – but your software would not let me update the Music Library UNTIL I had updated the tablets to the latest software. Guess what? Yep I couldn’t update them since you have made them obsolete. Luckily, we have mobile phones which can control the Sonos system.

I find this trend extremely worrying moving forward.

1 x Bridge – not used for a while since using WiFi network - BUT still worked perfectly

2 x PLAY 5 speakers – now tagged as ‘legacy’ - BUT still working perfectly – no problems

2 x branded Tablets – now unable to upgrade Sonos app - BUT still working perfectly on all other apps

• So, what next Sonos??           
• Next 6-12 months my PLAY 1’s go into ‘legacy’ status??
• Followed by SUB, PLAYBAR, PLAY 3’s a few years later??
• What happens if I had my mobile phone stolen, or gone out and bought a brand-new tablet, then loaded up the Sonos app again?? Surely it will load up the app to the latest release and then won’t run the ‘legacy’ system of 10x speakers I have at home??
• Is this the sort of ‘disrupt access to services and overall functionality’??
• These are the sort of queries we as a community need answered in a timely manner in order to decide on our route forward

I have worked all my life in Electronics / Software and Manufacturing and am very familiar with the huge improvements in tech over the last few decades along with the costs to a business of supporting older products. But you surely employ some smart Software and Hardware engineers who I’m sure would relish the challenge of resolving this issue to interoperate aging and newer systems and continuing to support a long and established customer base?

It’s all about a recurring revenue business model but sadly Sonos has missed the point by a country mile. Most of us have bought a speaker, been impressed and continued to grow our systems over time. You could have continued for years picking up new customers and additions to systems from longer term customers too.

But the loyal customer base are NOT what Sonos want any more since we live in a ‘Consumerism World’ now, where everything is throwaway – even expensive items. What I find even more offensive are products that still work well, with no problems, are still seen as worthless. We should be absolutely reducing consumption of raw materials, the idea that these products could be on the landfill site after five years is outrageous.

I have been brand loyal – along with many other people - because the products work and will continue to work because they are just speakers and feel bitterly let down by your organisation.

I can honestly say that this is AN EPIC FAIL on your behalf and sadly I join other voices in actively discouraging other potential customers from purchasing your products if asked.

You need to rethink this decision at the highest level.

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that your (ill-advised) decision around end-of-life strategy is now hitting main news outlets in UK. It will most definitely affect your reputation and sales in a very negative way, as your clients will vote with their feet in their next purchase decisions.

Please see link below.

Guardian News

Not saying that this will happen, but there are plenty of examples in history when these kind of policy decisions cause irreparable damages to a company.

Hmm, spend in excess of £1,000 to replace kit that is currently working prefectly so that it could cope with possible future pie in the sky, and then have to do it again in five years time - I don’t think so. Time to re-evaluate my home music strategy.

Well, at least we have not been given a diagnosis of cancer.

But it does feel like something dear has died, or has been given a death sentence.

SONOS - The Software Company

Many companies release End Of Life statements on equipment but the key is good communications and plenty of notice.  EoL statements should clearly details the dates for the end-of-sale, end-of-support and finally end-of-life.  SONOS should have released such a statement years ago to let people know if they were buying into a ‘legacy’ product’.  Just providing a few months notice shows a total disregard to customer loyalty.  Can anyone point me in the direction of such a statement for the Play:3 for instance or am I likely to be told tomorrow that it will not make the end of the year!

To also compromise the ‘Modern products’ until you are forced to remove your fully working but now deemed ‘EndofLife’ products is such an aggressive stance to take and again shows no respect for the customer base.

I have been a SONOS fan for many many years but will no longer be promoting them as they have obviously become a software company with extremely poor lifecycle management.

And like so many other software companies they will no doubt start looking for new ways of generating revenue such as licensing feature sets within their software.  

BEWARE - these are the signs of another naïve software company coming out of what was once a great Hardware company.

Word of mouth has been key to Sonos’s success. While we may not buy as many units as new customers, we are acting as advocates to new customers. Several of my friends have seen my system and bought Sonos units, because it’s a great system! This is a common story.

Also, the storm that this has created across the tech media, social media and on here will place doubt in many potential customers ie. you want to buy 3 units at a cost of £500 per unit and then plan to expand in the future. Seeing what has happened here, most won’t buy. Why pay premium prices when you can pay less and update at a much cheaper cost? Amazon, Google, Apple and many more can do that. Consumers aren’t idiots. Sonos’s reputation is built on many things, one of which is longevity. They CAN’T compete on price!

They will anounce their financials on 6th February. Let’s see where they are 12 months later. My bet is they will have a solution by May which will satisfy most. Otherwise, they will suffer and then probably be bought up as their share price declines. 

Fundamentally, as someone has mentioned previously, they have an opportunity here to sell a box with a fast processor, plenty of memory to allow customers to run 2 systems as 1. Most customers see this as a money grabbing decision, rightly or wrongly. 

We’ve seen Nokia, Kodak, and many more who made strategic errors which resulted in their decline and missing massive opportunities. In today’s world, bad as well as good news spreads very quickly. Remember Ratners before social media. 

Anyway, nobody in their right mind is going to upgrade a perfectly working product or expand their systems. They’re certainly not going to recommend Sonos to anybody else. In fact, the opposite. A Sonos system isn’t a mobile phone. It’s fundamentally a speaker. To brick products that work perfectly in a world looking to protect the environment, it’s madness. Recyling? Yeah right. Landfill for most and then all the energy used to build new units to replace legacy.

We’ll see who is right in May and/or by next year 2021.  

Hey Patrick… Hows the lawsuit going with Goggle?   Looks to me you decided to screw over your base to try to extort cash to pay legal fees… I’m not paying for that…  I can’t wait to hear the Feb 5th earning call…  better wear a diaper.

At the end of the day, I am happy Sonos has now clearly explained what is architecturally possible with their whole home audio system. They are only confident enough to be able to guarantee software updates and support for five years after they stop selling a generation of any given product. While sad and frustrating, if that’s the best they can do - oh well.

This clarity may well work for some people, and undoubtedly these people will be willing to continue investing in the Sonos ecosystem.

I am not willing to continue investing in a componentized whole home audio system anymore that will see pieces drop out of support and need replacing every 5-6 years.

The good thing as products fall into legacy, those of us who want out, can replace those legacy products with alternative products to Sonos and gradually escape the ecosystem we’ve invested in. Fortunately, nothing else locks us in once Sonos kills off our initial investment. Music streaming is a commodity widely available elsewhere, and none of our owned music is locked to Sonos either. So it could be worse!

Sonos has essentially come up with a path by which we can all go our separate ways if we so choose, and I wish those who remain committed to Sonos well.

Me, it turns out the clever bits that attracted me to Sonos in the first place are not so widely used by me. I almost never group speakers or control different music playback in different rooms. The typical use case in my home is one speaker is playing music and nothing else. And there are obviously lots of excellent options available for this use case.