Sonos plans 2024 loaded with new products, including headphones and set-top box
As the company has strongly hinted in recent weeks, Sonos will indeed launch its very first pair of headphones next year. It depends BloombergMark Gurman, who plans a release as early as April. The over-ear headphones are rumored to cost between $400 and $500 – very high-end territory for a company brand new to the category.
At least one headline feature will be their ability to sync music with other Sonos products in your home. The headphones will also include Sonos Voice Control, which is already heavily focused on music-related controls, unlike other, broader voice assistants from Amazon, Apple, and Google. Bloomberg says Sonos has been working on the headphones since 2019 but canceled earlier versions of the product, so the company’s past patent filings will likely have little impact on the final hardware. Sonos could follow the headphones with its own set of wireless earbuds.
Sonos could sell its first-ever headphones for up to $500
During Sonos’ quarterly earnings conference call last week, CEO Patrick Spence confirmed that the company plans to enter “a new multi-billion dollar category in the second half of the (fiscal) year )” which will represent the majority of the $100 million Sonos expects to invest. benefit from new product launches in 2024.
Bloomberg also reports that Sonos plans to launch a TV streaming device in late 2024 or early 2025. The company has telegraphed its video interests in recent years through job postings relating to a “home theater operating system,” as Protocol reported in March last year. Voice control will play a prominent role on the device, which is described as a little black box, much like every other streaming gadget these days. Sonos is already in discussions with entertainment service providers like Netflix to develop applications for the platform, but it could also launch its own service as it has already done in the audio space.
2024 will also see the introduction of a second-generation Sonos Roam portable Bluetooth speaker. It will be updated to match the superior controls of the Era and Move 2 speakers. Some customers of the first generation model complained about reliability and were disappointed with the speaker’s battery endurance over the time. So we hope Sonos will make some improvements on this as well. in front.
According to BloombergAccording to the report, other upcoming products include a refreshed Sub, a professional version of the Era 100 with built-in Ethernet, and a new soundbar – the follow-up to the Sonos Arc – expected towards the end of 2024. Sonos does not was only recently resolved. a “loud pop” bug that has plagued the $900 Arc for some owners since its release in 2020. The revamped soundbar will incorporate technology from Mayht, a startup acquired by Sonos in 2022, and could cost considerably more than the Arc, at around $1,200. That would put it closer to the more expensive Dolby Atmos soundbar sets from Samsung and other tech brands.
Sonos is trying to reverse a serious drop in demand with this wave of new devices
The wave of backlogged products is intended to revive Sonos’ hardware revenue after consumer demand for the company’s products saw a serious decline in 2023. This led Sonos to lay off 7% of its employees in June. And just last week, after Spence said 2024 would mark “the start of a multi-year product cycle in which we hope to reap the rewards of our research and development investments,” Sonos cut jobs again in his product development team – exactly the same result. group that one would expect to be relatively safe as the company pursues new categories of hardware.
“We’re pretty happy with the size of the team we have right now,” Spence said at the end of the fourth-quarter earnings conference call. “We do not see the need to hire significantly more staff to achieve our long-term growth goals.” These goals revolve around what Sonos constantly calls its “flywheel,” the idea that existing customers will regularly add more products to their Sonos system, occasionally replace older equipment with the latest model, sing the praises of the company to other people and will develop further. Sonos customers.
The biggest challenge facing Sonos when it finally enters the headphone and set-top box business will be to somehow clearly differentiate itself from its extremely successful competitors.
Photography by Chris Welch/The Verge
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