- Joined
- May 19, 2017
- Messages
- 1,829
In the beginning, Sonos made lots of money selling NAS-centric music hardware that was pretty to look at, easy to use, and just worked. Despite the eye-watering cost of the hardware, the early adopters piled on, content with a player that had spousal approval.
Times were good, margins were fat. When streaming content came along, Sonos pivoted away from the existing NAS base, laid off the applicable folk in their midst and pretty much ceased any and all support for the NAS side of the business. It was now a streaming-centric company.
A couple of competitors popped up (Bluesound, Denon, among others) but no one really challenged Sonos' position in the marketplace. These newer platforms had better underlying infrastructure (SMB2+, downloadable firmwares, etc.) but lacked the polish that was Sonos' differentiator (i.e. the app crashed a lot, no CR100, no CR200, etc.)
While Sonos never officially figured out how to make money from streaming (I expect placement fees were being negotiated under the table), a much bigger headache presented itself in the form of Amazon, Google, and Apple flooding the zone with cheap voice-activated speakers. Gone were the hardware profit margins, there was no subscription fee stream, so now what?
My guess is that management tried to sell the company by making their wares speech-compatible and backend-agnostic to appeal to the widest group of M&A folk. “Hi! Please Buy us for our user base...” a flat footed response at best. To sweeten the deal, they killed off perfectly functional hardware intentionally with a firmware update (see issues around CR100), bricked even more functional hardware as part of a hardware "upgrade" promotion, and generally did everything they could to apply as much lipstick to their pig of a business as they could.
Problem is, none of the big four (Apple, Amazon, Google, or perhaps Microsoft) wanted to buy them to expand their user base. They didn't need to. They'd gobble up Sonos just fine with their cheap stuff and that would be that. Plus, to them, the music side of the business was a distraction - the real emphasis was driving people to use Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana.
So Sonos pivots again, splits the firmware into S1 and S2 tree (the former to allow older stuff to continue to exist as a substantial user base refuses to throw out functional stuff, the latter for new and excitingly updated firmwares). However, 14 years after SMB2 became official Sonos hardware still doesn’t support it. I’m simply amazed that the network stack even in the allegedly “modern” S2 firmware is still stuck at SMB1 NTLM v1.
Bottom line, I don't see how Sonos will ever be anything more than a big player in a small market. Now that they no longer offer functional hardware controllers, their only real point of differentiation re: other gear is gone. Even more aggravating is their stance on firmware.
Sonos users may not choose their own firmware. Instead, users only get to run the most current firmware (S1 or S2 these days). So you don’t really own the equipment, just the hardware. If your equipment needs a hard reset, a new Sonos device is added to the home, or any user on the network elects to update one Sonos device (there are no safeguards, no passwords, no authentication), then all devices in the network have to be updated to the latest firmware.
So I have built multiple walls around my Sonos' to prevent them from communicating with the mothership (helps telemetrics jabbering as well - several hundred connection requests a day per zone player), prevent them from being able to update their firmware, etc. Competitors like Bluesound allow you to download and store firmware, upload it into the device yourself too (USB port).
Bottom line, Sonos stopped being a supplier for me when I realized how hostile they are vs. their user base. I block all traffic to their site other than the SSL validator (enables radio).
Times were good, margins were fat. When streaming content came along, Sonos pivoted away from the existing NAS base, laid off the applicable folk in their midst and pretty much ceased any and all support for the NAS side of the business. It was now a streaming-centric company.
A couple of competitors popped up (Bluesound, Denon, among others) but no one really challenged Sonos' position in the marketplace. These newer platforms had better underlying infrastructure (SMB2+, downloadable firmwares, etc.) but lacked the polish that was Sonos' differentiator (i.e. the app crashed a lot, no CR100, no CR200, etc.)
While Sonos never officially figured out how to make money from streaming (I expect placement fees were being negotiated under the table), a much bigger headache presented itself in the form of Amazon, Google, and Apple flooding the zone with cheap voice-activated speakers. Gone were the hardware profit margins, there was no subscription fee stream, so now what?
My guess is that management tried to sell the company by making their wares speech-compatible and backend-agnostic to appeal to the widest group of M&A folk. “Hi! Please Buy us for our user base...” a flat footed response at best. To sweeten the deal, they killed off perfectly functional hardware intentionally with a firmware update (see issues around CR100), bricked even more functional hardware as part of a hardware "upgrade" promotion, and generally did everything they could to apply as much lipstick to their pig of a business as they could.
Problem is, none of the big four (Apple, Amazon, Google, or perhaps Microsoft) wanted to buy them to expand their user base. They didn't need to. They'd gobble up Sonos just fine with their cheap stuff and that would be that. Plus, to them, the music side of the business was a distraction - the real emphasis was driving people to use Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana.
So Sonos pivots again, splits the firmware into S1 and S2 tree (the former to allow older stuff to continue to exist as a substantial user base refuses to throw out functional stuff, the latter for new and excitingly updated firmwares). However, 14 years after SMB2 became official Sonos hardware still doesn’t support it. I’m simply amazed that the network stack even in the allegedly “modern” S2 firmware is still stuck at SMB1 NTLM v1.
Bottom line, I don't see how Sonos will ever be anything more than a big player in a small market. Now that they no longer offer functional hardware controllers, their only real point of differentiation re: other gear is gone. Even more aggravating is their stance on firmware.
Sonos users may not choose their own firmware. Instead, users only get to run the most current firmware (S1 or S2 these days). So you don’t really own the equipment, just the hardware. If your equipment needs a hard reset, a new Sonos device is added to the home, or any user on the network elects to update one Sonos device (there are no safeguards, no passwords, no authentication), then all devices in the network have to be updated to the latest firmware.
So I have built multiple walls around my Sonos' to prevent them from communicating with the mothership (helps telemetrics jabbering as well - several hundred connection requests a day per zone player), prevent them from being able to update their firmware, etc. Competitors like Bluesound allow you to download and store firmware, upload it into the device yourself too (USB port).
Bottom line, Sonos stopped being a supplier for me when I realized how hostile they are vs. their user base. I block all traffic to their site other than the SSL validator (enables radio).
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. As an Android user, I can tell you that there is truly no win here. We are equipment and network renters, not owners in smartphone business. Monopolies of infrastructure determine the rules in an open market economy, lol. It is sad that one cannot just own a product anymore without worrying its longevity, which usually is intentionally compromised by the manufacturers. This includes iPhones (e.g.throttle issues), speakers, even the electric cars. They are now all subscription services as opposed to the ownership model.
