GoKawiilToday, I’m talking with Lila Snyder, who is the CEO of Bose.
You certainly know Bose — it’s one of the most famous brands in all of consumer tech. The company started 60 years ago selling speakers to consumers, and its focus on research and development has led it to be a leader in both car audio and noise-canceling headphones.
Lila was last on the show about four years ago, and since then she’s dramatically rearchitected the company. The focus on research is still there, but she’s sold off Bose Professional, acquired the high-end audio brands McIntosh Labs and Sonus faber, and, perhaps most importantly, started licensing all that core Bose technology to other companies.
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That means that while you can still go buy a Bose soundbar or Bose headphones, the company is also turning into a B2B business, and you can get Bose technology in Skullcandy headphones and Epson projectors, among many other products.
That big change in the business comes with a big change in structure. Becoming a software company in addition to a product company comes with a whole new set of challenges, and Lila and I talked about how it’s all working out.
I also wanted to know if this is all a reaction to the potential rise of AI wearables — products that might end up looking a lot like headphones, and which need all kinds of audio processing to enable voice input.
Is Bose just trying to sell tech to a range of new companies that might disrupt headphones entirely? Or does Lila have a plan for a headphones market that was already disrupted when phone vendors like Apple and Samsung made their own products like AirPods and Galaxy Buds work better than the competition?
We got deep on this, and Lila was pretty open about the challenges and the opportunities here. As Decoder listeners know, I’m a huge audio nerd, so I loved every minute of this conversation. I hope you do too.
Okay: Bose CEO Lila Snyder. Here we go.
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