Strategy in TECH...
Onkyo USA announced this week that it will become a retailer of Sonos wireless music systems – selling the company’s wireless music systems on Onkyo USA’s website. The company also says it will distribute the brand nationally as well.
SnapAV announced today that it will begin distributing Sonos wireless music systems beginning next month in October. The company says it will offer the entire line – including the Sonos Port, Sonos Move, and Sonos One SL – as part of its extensive assortment of gear targeted to the professional custom integrator.
Formally announced back in April, Sonos has collaborated with IKEA on a line of products for which it has great expectations. The first products of this collaboration – a table lamp with speaker built-in, and a thin bookshelf speaker that sits on a shelf and LOOKS LIKE a book…are finally now available. Will IKEA fans turn out in droves to buy these new models?
Strata-gee reported just yesterday that Sonos, Inc. has sued Lenbrook Industries Ltd. & Lenbrook America – the maker & marketer of Bluesound – for patent infringement. Undoubtedly emboldened by their near-complete victory over Denon’s HEOS brand a little over a year ago, Sonos appears to have targeted Lenbrook to be next in line.
However, Strata-gee has learned that Lenbrook is not the only company targeted for such potential actions by Sonos. There are more – perhaps many more – in our industry lined up for this “hit” parade.
On Thursday last week, Sonos, Inc. (NASDAQ: SONO) filed another patent infringement lawsuit, this time against Lenbrook Industries Limited and Lenbrook America Corp. At issue here is Lenbrook’s Bluesound brand launched back in 2013 to great fanfare as Strata-gee reported on at the time…and also discussed here…and which Sonos claims infringes on multiple Sonos patents.
Last week Sonos (Nasdaq: SONO) announced a new CFO to replace current CFO Mike Giannetto, whose retirement was unexpectedly announced almost as an afterthought in a February report of Q1 fiscal results. Late in the text associated with those results, CEO Patrick Spence, in an almost casual fashion, thanked Ginnetto for his service and told investors the CFO was retiring…a total surprise to the market. Sonos stock dropped double digits…and dropped even though the company had reported a record first quarter. (Read my report to see troubling signs within the ‘record’ Sonos quarterly report…)
Thanks to some heads-up reporting by The Verge, we learn that Sonos will announce an upgraded version of their Sonos One speaker system. According to the report, the upgrades are all internal and the new version will, somewhat confusingly, look exactly like the original one.
In what is becoming a bit of a familiar refrain in tech these days, including our report just yesterday on Control4’s results, Sonos reported record results for their fiscal first quarter on Wednesday. The company beat analysts’ expectations for revenues ($496 million vs. $491M expected) and for earnings ($0.55/share versus $0.41 expected). And yet, their stock tanked fully 17% after the announcement. Not only that, but as of 11:00AM today, Sonos stock is down another more than 13%.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Sonos announced a new product today called Amp. Amp is essentially everything Sonos offers for wireless powered speakers…for a normal wired passive speaker system. This opens the door to allow the integration of a wide range of third-party speakers into the Sonos ecosphere. But Sonos views Amp as much more than that – as the heart and start of integrating Sonos into a sophisticated smart home installation.
