Sonos was founded in August 2002 by John MacFarlane, Craig Shelburne, Tom Cullen and Trung Mai, with MacFarlane wanting to create a wireless service. History Corporate, financial, and marketing history In 2019 Sonos acquired Snips SAS, a privacy-focused AI voice platform for connected devices with the goal to bring a music-specific assistant to its devices. Sonos products work with the three major voice assistants: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri, although the last is currently only supported through Apple's Home app. Sonos has partnered with over 100 companies that offer music services, including Pandora, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, MOG, QQ Music, and Amazon Music. Patrick Spence has been its CEO since 2017. The company was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, Craig Shelburne, Tom Cullen, and Trung Mai. is an American developer and manufacturer of audio products best known for its multi-room audio products. After publication, Sonos told the Guardian that only versions of the Sonos Connect made before 2016 will be moved into “legacy” status newer units will continue to receive support.Sonos, Inc. An earlier version said that although Sonos Connect is on sale direct from the company, there is no note on the store page to warn that the device will not receive updates. This article was amended on 24 January 2020. Sonos did not reply to requests for comment from the Guardian. Sonos would have sued Amazon for the same infringement, its CEO said, but it felt that it only had the resources to fight one legal battle at a time. As well as the decision to end support for some devices, the company also launched a lawsuit against Google, claiming that it stole Sonos’s intellectual property and used to launch its own smart speaker, the Google Home. In recent months, Sonos has become more aggressive about trying to maintain profitability in the face of tough competition from rival technology platforms such as Apple, Google and Amazon. It added, in replies to concerned customers, that “we have no plans to suddenly make these devices obsolete”. Sonos is throwing any claimed environmental friendliness in the trash in order to sell more speakers.”Īt the time, Sonos said that Recycle Mode was optional, for customers who felt that “having modern Sonos devices capable of delivering these new experiences is important”. “Recycling takes energy and, while it saves materials, reuse is always better. “Anyone even remotely familiar with recycling can tell you the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle,’” one user argued. When Recycle Mode is enabled, Sonos credits the owner with a voucher worth 30% of the cost of the device – then sends a software update that renders the hardware unusable in the future. The company offered an alternative solution for users who want to continue to receive software updates: enable Recycle Mode on their older hardware, a setting that Sonos launched to some controversy in November. The first generation Play:5, a £500 speaker, was only replaced in 2015, and refurbished versions of were available from the company for some years after that. Others, including the Play:5, are high-quality speakers that continue to work for their intended purpose, playing audio.Īnd while Sonos emphasised the age of the technology in its initial release, noting that some of the hardware was launched almost 20 years ago, the company did not acknowledge that the devices were sold to new customers much more recently. Many are the sort that are physically built into the homes of users, as part of a wired-in multi-room audio arrangement. The company has come under particular fire for the types of devices included in the block. Unmentioned is the cybersecurity impact: without software updates, security vulnerabilities will remain unfixed, putting users’ networks at risk if they do not replace their devices. A freeze on software updates will initially have little effect, but over time it will eventually prevent the speakers from working at all, “particularly as partners evolve their technology”, Sonos said.
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