After spruiking new headphones for 2024, struggling US sound Company Sonos is going to have a crack at the box market, a move that will see them compete with Foxtel’s new Hubbl as well as new OS offerings from both Samsung and LG Electronics.
After leaking their headphone plans in an effort to divert reporting of their poor performance, Sono’s insiders are now talking up a new “Home Theatre OS,” and a box that delivers content spanning both video and music.
The move could see them having to compete with Foxtel’s new Hubbl, a new small Fetch puck as new content OS offering from Samsung with a new Tizen upgrade and LG who are set to use CES 2024 to talk up their Web OS offering and a new generation of OLED TVs that deliver content without the need for a free to air aerial.
And to top things of Sonos who lost a major court case to Google recently is also developing their own ‘Voice Control’ software that will take them head on with Amazon Alexa Google and Apple’s Siri.
Like the new Foxtel and Fetch pucks the new Sonos offering will come in a small black box, the only problem is that they are going to have to convince retailers to take them seriously in the TV content market.
Sonos is already in discussions with entertainment service providers in an effort to get access to the same content that is on most TV’s as well as Foxtel and Fetch streaming services.
As for the Sonos headphones the word is that it will be the first Sonos product to include their own house brand voice activation software, a technology that’s already a key feature in headphones from the likes of JBL, Bose and a multitude of other brands that already have either Google Voice or Amazon’s Alexa technology built in.
The Sonos technology is designed to deliver music-related commands, unlike other broader voice assistants from Amazon, Apple, and Google the Company has hinted.
Sonos management believe that they can take sales away from brands selling over A$600 headphones simple because they are branded Sonos.
According to Bloomberg Sonos has been working on the headphones since 2019 but cancelled earlier versions of the product, after hitting roadblocks.
With sales falling across almost all of their categories the business that reported a 32% slump in sales in the Asia Pacific region of which Australia is the biggest market Sonos is also undertaking a total refresh of their current product offering.
Among the new products scheduled for next year is a new amplifiers and in-ceiling speakers aimed at professional installers, as well as a higher-end TV sound bar, new subwoofers, an update to the portable Roam speaker and a version of its Era 100 speaker for use with a PC monitor.
A second-generation Sonos Roam will also be released in 2024 that the Company hopes will fix problems with their current model that suffers from poor battery life.
Sono’s designers who appear to have stuffed up with their first crack at the portable speaker market are set to update the topside controls of the Era speakers and Move 2.
Some customers of the first-gen model have complained about reliability and being disappointed by the speaker’s battery performance when using it outside.
A new Era 100 will have built-in ethernet, with the business also developing a replacement for the poor selling Sonos Arc.
The new product offering is supposed to stop the decline in sales with CEO Patrick Spence claiming that 2024 would mark “the beginning of a multi-year product cycle.
What he will have to do is clearly differentiate Sonos from hugely successful competitors a move that he is struggling to do with his current audio offering with overall sales coming in at US$1.655 billion for the last quarter,, a decline of just under $100 million ($97.1 million) or 5.5% as compared to sales of $1.752 billion in fiscal 2022.
Sales dropped in every product category and in most of the regions in which the company does business, and this is what is alarming, with their once growth custom installer business looking decidedly problematic despite Westan being given the rights to the Sonos product range for the channel in Australia.
Also impacting the Companies sales is the decline of Snap One sales for third party products.
Sonos Installer sales were down 7% with the category achieving zero growth between 2018 to 2019.
