Photo Credit: Ashley Byrd
Sonos had a terrible 2024. The botched app rollout is estimated to have cost the company $100 million in revenue. It led the former CEO Patrick Spence to apologize for getting it wrong before stepping down eight months later. After delayed product plans, we now have a sniff of Sonos’ new direction. It’s a video player to compete with the likes of Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku and Amazon Firestick.
Sonos launched an AirPods Max competitor last year, but you’re forgiven if you missed the news. Even Patrick Spence told shareholders that the app fiasco hampered excitement for the Sonos Ace headphones launch. “[The Ace headphones launch was] overshadowed by the problems that our customers and partners experienced as the result of the rollout of our new app,” Spence said at the time. “We have a clear action plan to address the issues caused by our app as quickly as possible.”
The result is the Sonos Arc soundbar and the rumored Sonos video streaming box were delayed so engineers could focus on fixing the app. (The new app still does not have feature parity with the old one, ticking off many long-time Sonos customers on the subreddit.) Bloomberg first reported the existence of a Sonos TV set-top box in November 2023. At the time, the device was rumored to cost between $150 and $200 and offer a way to stream most services.
Fast forward a few months and now The Verge is reporting on what that set-top box could look like. An interesting note is that the price from the Bloomberg rumor has nearly doubled—it could cost between $200 and $400 now. That would make it one of the most expensive video streaming setups available from its major competitors (even Apple).
“I’ve seen images of the upcoming product, which is deep into development, and it’s about as nondescript as streaming hardware gets,” reports The Verge’s Chris Welch. “Viewed from the top, the device is a flattened black square and slightly thicker than a deck of cards.” The box itself is based on Android and is codenamed Pinewood. The device is intended to unify video streaming by offering universal search and integrated Sonos Voice control.
What makes it so expensive is that the box will also serve as an HDMI switch with several HDMI ports with passthrough technology. External devices like game consoles, and Blu-ray players can be unified under a single interface, giving Sonos more control over the I/O stack of a person’s entertainment setup. Pinewood is also rumored to support configuring a genuine surround sound system using Sonos’ other speakers—though Sonos has not finalized which speaker arrangements the system will support.
Sonos’ new interim CEO Tom Conrad will hold his first call with investors later this week. Prior to his appointment in January, he served as the Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Product at Pandora between 2004 and 2014. Since then, he’s bounced from Snapchat to Quibi before landing at a health-related app company.