- The head of Sonos has more to share
- He says Sonos is moving into the headphone category
- However, on-board audio is not a major priority at the moment
Sonos CEO Tom Conrad has been busy speaking to media outlets including TechRadar about his plans for the high-end audio company, and in a new interview he confirms Sonos’ continued commitment to one product category – while dampening expectations in another.
Conrad spoke to Chris Welch at Bloomberg about how Sonos intends to follow up on the Sonos Ace headphones launching in June 2024, and the CEO stressed that his company remains “really excited” about new pairs of headphones in the future.
It looks like the Sonos Ace 2 headphones may not be too far away at that point, but Conrad expressed some regret about how the original pair was positioned in the market – and suggests selling them to existing Sonos customers first might have been a better strategy.
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“I think Ace’s thesis at launch was that this is a $5 or $6 billion category, that we can make a pair of headphones as good or better than anything else on the market, and that the opportunity is to go out there and fight hand-to-hand with Sony and Bose and Apple and win,” Conrad says.
“Strategic power”
While it seems likely that more headphones are on the way, don’t expect an in-car audio solution from Sonos in the near future. Sonos already has a partnership with Audi, but at the moment we’re not going to see much more – certainly nothing like Cadillac’s AKG Dolby Atmos system, for example.
“As soon as you get in the car, there are a bunch of new guards,” Conrad says. “I’m looking for sites where we have some strategic power, and I feel like in the car it’s a little difficult to make the case that we have a ton of strategic power.”
However, there is still a “small team” working on potential Sonos products for the car. “I would call what we do in the automotive sector a hobby,” says the CEO. “Let’s see what’s going on over there.”
Aside from future speculation, there are some actual new products from Sonos on the market that you can buy right now, which fall under the company’s main focus on wireless speakers: there’s a refreshed Play speaker with increased portability, as well as a cheaper version of the Era 100 – we’ve got all the details here.
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