After a brief COVID-driven boom, they laid off 130 people last year, and again just a few days ago. A lot of this was because the CEO rushed out a huge rewrite of the app (which controls everything – the speakers cannot be used without it), which led to widespread failures and system errors, even months later. It went from a functional (if plain) system to a completely broken one, basically overnight. The CEO publicly apologized, but problems continue (https://www.sonos.com/en-us/blog/update-on-the-sonos-app).
Their stock is down nearly 40% since 6 mos ago (https://www.google.com/search?q=Sonos+stock&ie=UTF-8). Their app reviews went from 4 stars to 1 star in less than a month (https://www.appbrain.com/app/sonos/com.sonos.acr2). On the forums, there's calls for the CEO to step down, along with multiple threats of class-action lawsuits. People have been begging for a rollback to the old app, only to be continuously denied by the company. Finally, they are considering it (https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/14/24220421/sonos-s2-app-rel...).
This is a company that has made the same tragic error before, trying to discontinue software support for older devices – and that wasn't even that long ago (2020: https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-will-make-two-separate-son...), to a huge customer backlash.
I've never seen a company self-destruct quite this badly (even Google usually has the courtesy of providing refunds or migration paths when they graveyard something).
Their CEO, Patrick Spence, was formerly of RIM/Blackberry, another company that went the way of the dustbin. Wonder if a Sonos bankruptcy is on the horizon too...
As a user, I hope they get bought out, leadership gets replaced, and they install someone with a stronger customer focus.
As a customer, I won't make that mistake again (of buying expensive cloud-only hardware products from an unreliable company). (Expensive) lesson learned, I guess :(