I think you're underselling the technical complexity of doing what Sonos did. It was a pretty impressive feat for them to do what they did over WiFi. The reason your Google Home can do it is because, while it's a pretty decent technical challenge, it's not insurmountable, and Google decided that the price tag Sonos put on themselves was more expensive then Google dedicating a reasonable quantity of their highly talented engineering staff to recreate the technology.

I think that's the kicker. It was revolutionary when it came out, and it's a solid technical solution, but Sonos was novel over a decade ago.

Every novel invention becomes commodity over time. The issue is that, instead of trying to invent something new, they’re adding gimmicks and present it as growth.

True, but as the comment a few above mentions, “we demand growth long after everyone is satisfied.” Why even grow at all once you’ve achieved a great networked speaker? If the product is mature, everything after is gimmicks especially weighed against user satisfaction, the ultimate goal.

The market has matured, but as of a year ago, there isn't another solution that I could drop in that could replace my SONOS system. SONOS is so far ahead and had to establish themselves by solving for so many fringe use cases that they are generally the only ones who have things like the connect:amps to bridge wired outdoor speakers and architectural in-ceiling/in-garden speakers within the same ecosystem

I'm sure that at some point, Samsung or Google or Sony or some upstart will catch up, but it will be a long time before someone eliminates SONOS from contention despite this multi-year setback

HEOS-capable gear from Marantz and Denon cover a lot of the applications you referenced. I decided I would never buy another Sonos product after the S2 rollout, and I now have a mix of eleven Denon and Marantz receivers driving both built-in, freestanding, and outdoor speakers of my choice all over my house.

HEOS is amazing for the size of the dev team, which I think is a couple folks somewhere in a large garage in Minnesota[0]. The amount of things they never touch is amazing. I appreciate the stability - my HEOS 1 speaker is still working, streaming tunein and tidal without issues - but when it comes to the app, it's borderline stagnation at this point.

[0] I have no idea what it is actually

This probably costs a fortune. Certainly there is a market.

So basically the only USP of Sonos is mindshare.

They had a fairly unique and high-quality product in the early days.

It just did’t evolve very far or very fast, or even adapt pricing to better fit a rapidly changing market.

They switched away from a focus on multi-room hi-fi (or at least mid-fi) audio and users with their own hoard of digital audio to focus more on streaming services and chase the trend of little monophonic speakers. The higher-end devices remained good but became ever more niche.

Then they broke everything, particularly customer trust, with the app update.

Heh, this thread reminded me that I own Sonos speakers that I haven't used in several years because at some point they updated and I needed to install an app or make an account or something to use them and never did.

So while it's maybe neat that they solved fringe use cases, it's unfortunate that they failed at the basic use case of "just easily play audio from my phone"

Look into Roon.

You can always short SONO. It'll probably muddle along for 5+ more years until someone buys it up for the brand name. There just isn't the market for their speakers that there used to be.

I did this with an amplifier and a couple cheap AudioCast devices as inputs. I can go to the app and pick which zones play together.

Not exactly sure what you mean - is there some reason companies that sell speakers shouldn't be able to be publically traded?

Yes. It will further abstract the owners’ responsibility to the users, and the product will get shittier faster.

That's a general rant against publically traded companies. I'm specifically asking about the original posters take that a company that makes speakers specifically shouldn't be publicly traded. Like it sounded like they thought a speaker company couldn't be big enough to be on NASDAQ or something?