Sonos CEO says the company didn’t understand the real world

Interim Sonos CEO Tom Conrad said in an interview that two of the unpopular decisions the company made were deliberate, but the biggest problem was that it failed to understand how its products were used in the real world. Conrad said that Sonos would never have released the new app had it fully appreciated the difference between its lab testing environment and real homes … The disastrous story of the new Sonos app In May of last year, Sonos launched the company’s first headphones, the Ace, intended to compete with AirPods Max. The app needed to be updated to support these, and the company decided to use it as an opportunity for a ground-up rebuild, launching a completely new app just ahead of the launch. Things did not go well. Customers were upset at the company removing much-loved features, and many owners of older Sonos speakers experienced connection problems and lag. Given that the whole idea of Sonos is an Apple-esque It Just Works, customers were understandably angry at the ... Read full article.