In what appears to be a big punt for Sonos who are haemorrhaging profits, the US sound Company has started spruiking on social media and in emails to customers who are now buying direct a new “coming soon” product which everyone knows is their new headphones. The Company is also working on a new TV puck similar to Foxtel Groups Hubbl.
Sonos management is sweating on their new Ace headphones delivering the injection that the Company needs to replace falling sales of their Sonos speakers.
During a recent financial call management claimed that they expect to generate US$100M in sales from their new headphones that were recently leaked by authorized dealer Schuurman in Germany.
The Company is set to launch their new offering tomorrow May 22nd up against offerings from Bowers & Wilkins, Bose, Sony, Apple & Beats.
Initially the headphones that look pretty ordinary, were set to be released in June, but given the recent leak that got worldwide publicity the business whose sales in Australia have slumped has decided to launch earlier.
Earlier this month the business was handling another botched product announcement with their latest app slammed by for the bits that were missing.
Created in part to support the Sonos Ace, it was missing key features like a sleep timer or functionality that allowed for local library management.
And like a lot of things at Sonos getting these features back may take months with questions raised as to why they were missing in the first place.
One observation was that Sonos are desperate for consumers to sign up for streamed content vs playing their own library of content.
What we do know is that Sonos is set to release the Roam 2, in June despite poor sales of their Roam 1 speaker that has to compete up against the popular JBL and BlueAnt range of speakers in Australia.
The Verge claims that the new speaker will look nearly identical to the original Roam and Roam SL, but with a colour-matched “Sonos” and a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button.
Several reviewers have claimed that Roam had some annoying drawbacks, like requiring Wi-Fi setup before you can use Bluetooth, and an unintuitive pairing process which is due in part to Sonos’s inability to develop easy to use software and their manic obsession for proprietary operating systems in the past.
ChannelNews understands that they are also going to have a crack at releasing a puck which is basically a TV streaming device with the Company generating revenue from trailing revenue from app developers and advertising.
It will also allow them to collect additional information on their customers, which like LG Electronics and their WebOS TVs allows them to not only sell advertising on their WebOS platform but track what owners are watching and then sell that data to third parties.
