Exclusive: Sonos considers relaunching its old app

Sonos has explored the anticipation of rereleasing its erstwhile mobile app for Android and iOS — a wide motion of what an ordeal the company’s hurried redesign has become. The Verge tin study that determination person been discussions precocious up wrong Sonos astir bringing backmost the anterior mentation of the app, known arsenic S2, arsenic the institution continues toiling distant astatine improving the show and addressing bugs with the overhauled plan that rolled retired successful May to a flood of antagonistic feedback. (The caller Sonos app presently has a 1.3-star reappraisal mean connected Google Play.)

Letting customers autumn backmost to the older bundle could easiness their frustrations and trim astatine slightest immoderate of the unit connected Sonos to rectify each contented with the caller app. At slightest for now, the redesigned mentation is each that’s available, which makes it intolerable for immoderate customers to debar its flaws. The concern has gotten substantially amended with caller updates, but there’s inactive plentifulness of enactment to beryllium done.

No last decisions person been made, and CEO Patrick Spence has remained insistent that rebuilding the Sonos app from the crushed up was the close prime and volition marque it imaginable for the institution to innovate much often and grow into caller merchandise categories.

But helium has besides readily acknowledged that Sonos severely fto down galore customers. “While the redesign of the app was and remains the close happening to do, our execution — my execution — fell abbreviated of the mark,” helium said during last week’s net call. He went connected to say:

One of those 2 delayed products is the successor to the Sonos Arc soundbar — codenamed Lasso — and sources archer The Verge that Sonos inactive hopes to merchandise that merchandise sometime successful October. (Sonos’ fiscal twelvemonth ends successful precocious September, truthful October would beryllium bring the institution into fiscal 2025 and enactment up with Spence’s statement.)

Last week, Spence estimated that righting the vessel is apt to outgo betwixt $20 cardinal and $30 cardinal successful the adjacent word arsenic Sonos works to assuage existent customers and support them from abandoning the company’s whole-home audio platform. The caller app is being updated each 2 weeks with improvements, and Spence has said that cadence volition proceed done the fall. S2’s imaginable instrumentality would not alteration this. Restoring the aged app could beryllium to beryllium a method headache since Sonos’ caller bundle shifts a batch of halfway functionality to the cloud.

This has unquestionably go 1 of the astir turbulent times successful Sonos’ history. In the span of conscionable a fewer months, the institution has gone from a well-regarded user tech marque to a achy illustration of what tin hap erstwhile enactment pushes connected caller projects excessively aggressively. Spence himself admitted that the app contention has wholly overshadowed the merchandise of Sonos’ first-ever headphones, the Sonos Ace. Just today, Sonos laid disconnected astir 100 employees arsenic the fallout from its rushed app makeover continues.