Sonos has explored the possibility of rereleasing its previous mobile app for Android and iOS — a clear sign of what an ordeal the company’s hurried redesign has become. The Verge can report that there have been discussions high up within Sonos about bringing back the prior version of the app, known as S2, as the company continues toiling away at improving the performance and addressing bugs with the overhauled design that rolled out in May to a flood of negative feedback. (The new Sonos app currently has a 1.3-star review average on Google Play.)
Letting customers fall back to the older software could ease their frustrations and reduce at least some of the pressure on Sonos to rectify every issue with the new app. At least for now, the redesigned version is all that’s available, which makes it impossible for some customers to avoid its flaws. The situation has gotten substantially better with recent updates and the app has turned a corner for many, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.
CEO Patrick Spence has remained insistent that rebuilding the Sonos app from the ground up was the right choice and will make it possible for the company to innovate more frequently and expand into new product categories.
But he has also readily acknowledged that Sonos severely let down its customers. “While the redesign of the app was and remains the right thing to do, our execution — my execution — fell short of the mark,” he said during last week’s earnings call. He went on to say:
The app situation has become a headwind to existing product sales, and we believe our focus needs to be addressing the app ahead of everything else. 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 two delayed products is the successor to the Sonos Arc soundbar — codenamed Lasso — and sources tell The Verge that Sonos still hopes to release that product sometime in October. (Sonos’ fiscal year ends in late September, so October would bring the company into fiscal year 2025 and line up with Spence’s statement.)
Last week, Spence estimated that righting the ship is likely to cost between $20 and $30 million in the near term as Sonos works to assuage current customers and keep them from abandoning the company’s whole-home audio platform. The new app is being updated every two weeks with improvements, and Spence has said that cadence will continue through the fall. S2’s potential return would not change this. Restoring the old app could prove to be a technical headache since Sonos’ new software shifts a lot of core functionality to the cloud.
This has unquestionably become one of the most turbulent times in Sonos’ history. In the span of just a few months, the company has gone from a well-regarded consumer tech brand to a painful example of what can happen when leadership pushes on new projects too aggressively. Spence himself admitted that the app controversy has completely overshadowed the release of Sonos’ first-ever headphones, the Sonos Ace. Just today, Sonos laid off around 100 employees as the fallout from its rushed app makeover continues.
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