‘Push for speed backfired,’ Sonos CEO says as new products delayed | Digital Trends

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence today in the company’s third-quarter earnings call said that two new products scheduled for later this year will be delayed until major issues in the Sonos ecosystem are fixed.

The news comes as Spence continued to apologize and lay out the roadmap for returning customer experience to its former standards following the May update to the Sonos app, as well as the greater Sonos hardware wireless system.

“The app situation has become a headwind to existing product sales,” Spence said. “And we believe our focus needs to be addressing the app ahead of everything else. This means delaying the two major new product releases we had planned for Q4, until our app experience meets the level of quality that we our customers and our partners expect from Sonos.”

Spence didn’t allude to what those new products might be, but chances are they’re in the speaker category, and quite possibly an update to the Sonos Arc soundbar. He did say that they’re ready to ship, however.

Spence also shed a little light into why the entire Sonos system needed an overhaul — and why things went so wrong. He also said that the company is investing $20 million to $30 million to “address the short-term pain” and fix things, and “get back to customers raving about Sonos.”

“A few years ago, we decided to embark on a complete ground-up rewrite of our app,” he said in his prepared remarks. “One reason was to address the performance and reliability issues that had crept in over the last 20 years and were negatively affecting our customers’ experience. This would have been reason enough. But as important, we viewed re-architecting the app as essential to the growth of Sonos as we expand into new categories and move ambitiously outside the home.”

The Sonos Ace headphones, announced just after the initial app update that went so wrong, were the non-speaker product for the company. (Aside from the odd accessory here and there.)

Spence said that the system rebuild really was about preparing for the future, and that the previous iteration couldn’t support what was coming.

“In addition to its more modern user interface, the new app has a modular developer platform based on modern programming languages that will allow us to drive more innovation faster, and thus let Sonos deliver all kinds of new features over time that the old app simply could not accommodate,” he said. “Some of these new features are already on our drawing boards and could represent our entry into new categories. Others are still to be imagined. But without a modern app, they would have remained beyond our reach.”

Spence, who joined the company as chief commercial officer in 2012 after 14 years at BlackBerry, continued to accept responsibility for the debacle.

“While the redesign of the app was and remains the right thing to do,” he said, “our execution — my execution — fell short of the mark. Since I took over as CEO, one of my particular points of emphasis has been the imperative for Sonos to move faster. That is what led to my promise to deliver at least two new products every year, a promise we have successfully delivered on with the app. However, my push for speed backfired.”