Skip to main content

Sonos CEO: ‘Stay tuned,’ newest product will launch in March

During the company’s 2021 Q1 earnings call with analysts, Sonos CEO, Patrick Spence revealed that the brand’s fans won’t have to wait much longer to see its next product.

“We are excited to introduce our newest product next month,” Spence said after touting the company’s impressive 15-year stretch of sustained revenue growth. “Stay tuned for details.”

Spence didn’t drop any hints as to what kind of product we can expect to see, but the most likely candidate at the moment is a smaller version of the Sonos Move, a portable rechargeable speaker that can work with other Sonos products over Wi-Fi, or on its own using Bluetooth.

A recently released set of documents from the FCC points to the possible existence of a Move Mini, which will have a more compact, cylindrical shape than the Move. The Move is an excellent wireless speaker, but its big size, big weight, and big price — $399 — keeps it from being a no-brainer recommendation for Sonos fans.

A similar fate befell Apple’s first smart speaker, the $349 HomePod. Apple eventually reduced the HomePod’s price, but also ended up producing the much more affordable $99 HomePod Mini.

Another possibility for the Sonos March product reveal is the company’s first set of wireless headphones. In 2020, the U.S. Patent Office published documents that show Sonos is at least contemplating the creation of a headphone product. Now that Apple has released its $549 AirPods Max, an expensive set of premium over-ear noise-canceling headphones that have been receiving generally very favorable reviews, Sonos might see this as the perfect environment into which it can release a competitive product at a similar price.

Whether March’s announcement is a Move Mini, a set of wireless headphones, or something else, Spence has promised that the company is going to stick to an aggressive product release schedule. “We remain committed to launching at least two new products per year and are well on track as we look at our fiscal 2021 product roadmap.”

Sonos’ most recent official announcement was the launch of Sonos Radio HD, a premium, paid tier of its Sonos Radio streaming music channels, offering ad-free, exclusive content and CD-quality streams.

Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
Sonos teases upcoming launch of the Era generation
A Sonos email touting an upcoming launch.

Sonos today sent out an email telling folks to "Get ready for a new era of sound." Get it? New "era?" Because that's exactly what's about to drop with the Era 100 and Era 300 speakers, which already have leaked in pretty good detail.

The countdown on the email points to something happening on Tuesday, March 7, and the email says to expect preorders then, too.

Read more
Ikea hastily removes product page for its Sonos wall art speaker
Leaked image of an Ikea Sonos speaker

It seems that Ikea inadvertently confirmed the existence of a new Sonos-powered smart speaker for the Symfonisk product line. A product page on the company's website, spotted by The Verge on June 1, detailed a Symfonisk "picture frame with Wi-Fi speaker," priced at $199. The product page has since been removed.

"You can choose to hang it on its own on the wall as an eye-catcher, match it with your other pictures on a wall, place it on the floor, or lean it against a wall,” Ikea’s site reportedly said. The term "picture frame" may be too literal -- it doesn't look like people will be able to put any art they like on the speaker's front, but there will likely be a choice of decor options created in an acoustically transparent fabric.

Read more
What you need to know before upgrading your Sonos system to S2 software
before upgrading to sonos s2 read this separate systems s1 app

If you're a Sonos user, you may have noticed that the familiar black Sonos app icon has undergone a small change: It's now called Sonos S1. That's because Sonos has a new app and new system software that it calls S2.

If you haven't seen it already, you're going to be prompted by your now-renamed Sonos S1 app to upgrade to the new Sonos S2 app. But before you do that, you need to read this first: Upgrading to the new software could leave your older Sonos devices stranded, with no way to talk to the rest of your speakers.

Read more