Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has confirmed that plans to launch two major new products in the coming months have been shelved, as the Santa Barbara brand needs to focus on tidying up the mess of the buggy new app, which was launched in May.
“Our focus needs to be addressing the app ahead of everything else,” Spence told investors during an earnings call. “This means delaying the two major new product releases we had planned for Q4 until our app experience meets the level of quality that we, our customers and our partners expect from Sonos.”
One of those products was expected to be a new flagship soundbar to replace the Sonos Arc. Images and details of the 2nd-gen Arc leaked last month – Codenamed Lasso, it was expected to improve upon the Arc with more powerful bass, Bluetooth audio playback, and completely new speaker technology.
Spence confirmed that two products were ready to be shipped in Q4 but will now be held back while the app cleanup continues.
Last month, Spence penned an open letter to users, apologizing for the numerous issues the new Sonos app brought with it and the app rollout was one of the big talking points from the earnings call.
”We pour our heart and soul into everything we do, and we’re proud of what we build, and the way Sonos brings joy to our customers’ lives,” Spence explained. “That’s why it’s so painful to let customers down the way we have with our new app.
”While the redesign of the app was and remains the right thing to do, our execution, my execution fell short of the mark… my push for speed backfired,” he added.
“As we rolled out the new software to more and more users, it became evident that there were stubborn bugs we had not discovered in our testing. As a result, far too many of our customers, especially those with some of our older products in their systems, are having an experience that is worse than what they previously had.”
While it’s great that Sonos is finally admitting that the app isn’t up to speed and is focusing on making things right, the Sonos community forum and the Sonos subreddit are still awash with angry users who have seemingly lost faith in the brand.
Sonos is, it seems, is running at full speed to make things right with the app, with bi-weekly update cadence fixing bugs and reintroducing missing features and is hoping to get users back on side in the coming weeks and months.
“We are enacting programs this quarter to both support and thank our customers and partners for sticking with us through this period and turn their dissatisfaction to delight,” Spence said on the call.
“We expect these investments will come at a cost in the range of $20 million to $30 million in the short term but are necessary to right the ship for the long term.”
