A recent Wired report goes over Sonos’ declining revenue and speculates that the new app that’s been plaguing the company this year might even be built to facilitate a future subscription service, although the company has since claimed that it’s not actively working on one.
The report says that Sonos’ revenue has declined eight percent this year and five percent the year before. This is in addition to two rounds of layoffs, and the company releasing the much-anticipated Ace headphones.
That said, Sonos has still managed to attract one million new users, and the average person has 3.08 speakers, up from 3.05 the year before. That said, in previous years, the company acquired more than a million users per year.
This is where things get a little sketchy, but the report says that an ex-Sonos employee suggested that it was a bit weird that the company poured so much resources into its new app if it doesn’t have any plans to monetize it. That said, the company has said that updating the app will allow them to have a more modern code base that will allow for even more features to be added in the future. In response to Wired, Sonos firmly denied that a subscription model is in the works, but it didn’t deny that it would never be in the cards.
People expect a subscription because the new version of the app will send requests to control your speakers through Sonos’ servers instead of doing so locally on your device. Now that the speaker commands need to hit the internet, there is a way for Sonos to block them if you don’t pay for a subscription. That said, I wouldn’t expect the company to limit or block any of its existing services, but perhaps new features in the future might be moved to a paid tier.
Source: Wired
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