Sonos has had a tumultuous few months, all of which date back to what was now clearly a rushed app design that led to a terrible experience for many customers and a long, messy process of repairing those relationships. It overshadowed the long-anticipated launch of the Ace over-ear headphones, though the more recently launched Arc Ultra soundbar’s impressive specs did shine through.
More recently, CEO Patrick Spence left, and a new leadership was ushered in. Earlier this week, it was announced that Sonos would further reduce its overall headcount, laying off 200 employees. Still, the new interim CEO Tom Conrad is shedding a bit more light on the internal changes – and much of it can be read in a way that’s returning to form.
While Conrad is quick to repeat that a lot more work needs to be done, he’s almost looking back in a good way. “I’m returning Sonos to a scrappier and more focused enterprise,” said Conrad, who’s focused on changing how Sonos operates. “I’ve reorganized our product and engineering staff into functional teams for hardware, software, design, quality and operations and away from dedicated business units devoted to individual product categories. This allows us to bring together rightsized cross functional projects that maximize our efficiency as we continuously evaluate, prioritize and focus on the highest value market opportunities,” explained Conrad.
It’s a re-do on a previous structure that clearly did not work in a fluid way, most notably with folks mostly just working on individual parts of the business. Quite possibly just the app or maybe even more segments, that didn’t come together to improve the entire ecosystem of Sonos. That was likely a miss, and we saw some of the potential outcomes come to fruition, but Conrad and the teams left at Sonos have now been reorganized to better look at the brand as a whole.
For instance, the app is likely no longer siloed, with a team focused solely on it; rather, it might be more integrated across the entire lineup. How can the app better work with the Arc Ultra while improving interoperability with future products or creating a new flow to help you regroup existing, connected products when new ones are introduced?
Conrad described the setup at Sonos as being layered with redundancies, which likely made it hard to work across departments and, therefore, across product lines. Similarly, with a focus on “improving the Sonos experience to a place that exceeds the expectations of all of our customers,” he’s ensuring the company is operating in a way to hit this, or at least setting it up with that hope.
In the same vein, Conrad also stated that even with the near-constant app updates and other changes, “our core experience still needs significant improvement.” And that certainly should bring some hope to Sonos customers, long-standing ones and future ones. The restructure, while tough, and it is never good to see employees let go at any business, might help Sonos right the ship a bit more and ensure that a disaster on the level of the app doesn’t occur again.
As for what might be next, our Managing Editor of Home Entertainment, Matthew Bolton, gave his expert analysis on the rumored streaming box.
And you can see the full transcript of the Sonos Quarter One of 2025 earnings call here.
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jacob.krol@futurenet.com (Jacob Krol)
