Sonos CEO insists iOS app cannot be rolled back to the older, better one
Sonos users will have to continue using the current and hugely disliked iOS app, with the company's CEO making it clear that it's not possible to roll back to the older app any longer.
The Sonos app on an iPhone
Since its app update in May, Sonos has received frequent complaints about the revision, with users upset by a number of missing features and functionality. While the company CEO has already apologized for the disruption caused by the new app, there's apparently no way back for the app at all.
In an "Office Hours" Q&A session on Reddit on Monday, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, continued the apology tour with assurances about the app. However, those assurances would not include rolling back the app to a previous state.
Spence admits that he had been hopeful of a release of the old app, referred to as S2, but it turns out that it's not possible. The problem is that it has gone too far adjusting other software elements to ever go back.
"The trick of course is that Sonos is not just a mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too," Spence writes. "In the months since the new mobile app launched we've been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember."
After "extensive testing," Spence says that the re-release of S2 would "make the problems worse, not better."
Spence adds that, as a "silver lining," Sonos is now focused on getting the new software working properly for consumers.
As promised in a previous apology, changes are on the way, including making the set-up process of new products more reliable. The company is also keen to reduce the number of "something went wrong" errors that users encounter.
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I still cannot add song to a Sonos Playlist, and still get something wrong errors accessing recently played content from their Home Screen, and Apple Music content played from the Sonos app is way too loud, and the lowest volume levels cut out completely.
This is ongoing for months now.
So no more Sonos for me. Ever
Sonos has made so many missteps in recent years that it's tarnishing the image.
weve all had experiences where new software causes unexpected problems. It seem that here, a major mistake they made was to continue updating other software for devices while this problem existed, making it impossible le to revert to the previous system while the tracked the problems down and, hopefully, eliminated them. Chase was able to revert until they found and fixed the problem. That’s usually a standard thing for Marge companies. As we know, if you update your OS, Apple gives several weeks to over a months for you to revert if there’s a problem.
It stores several thousand tracks and can use the Sonos speakers.
Sonos's wounds are entirely self-inflicted (not for the first time), and furthermore they admit that.
But... and it's a big one... this is not to say that all is fine in Sonos land. The real damage inflicted by the botched app rollout will probably be reflected in Q4 sales to be released in early November. Why? Because the release of two major new products, which should be out and selling already, are being held up because of the app. One is the long overdue Arc 2... not sure what the other one is. Sonos really has no choice--they can't afford to take any chance of damaging the consumer experience and thus future sales of these new products because of the app. They can't release these products until certain that the app issues are fixed. But the shortfall in projected sales will probably be painful. How bad? The analyst with the best track record who currently covers Sonos has just slashed his estimates for year-over-year sales from +30% to -20%. Yes, a 50% swing to the downside. He also slashed his target price for the stock from $25--which seemed perfectly reasonable when Sonos was near $20 back in March--to $10. But if Sonos can get the app fixed and products released in time for holiday shopping, it should be able to recover pretty quickly.
I do think your question about how this botched app got out the door is a valid one. (fwiw, I've read that the pressure to get the Ace headphones released, which required the new app, was the reason.) But still... Sonos is selling a very premium-priced product relative to the competition, with the consumer experience of those products largely hinging on the app. So to rush a new version of that app out the door with (clearly) insufficient testing is corporate malpractice on an epic scale that has definitely dealt a blow to the company and its reputation, but one from which it still has the ability to recover.
You have to be careful when you mention analysts expectations. If they already accounted for the problem in their estimates, then they would have been lower than otherwise. Beating these low expectations may seem good, but what would it have been otherwise? You don’t know that.