Sonos CEO Says the Company Can’t Bring Its Old App Back

A disastrous redesign of Sonos’ mobile app that led to customer complaints, hurt sales and caused the delay of two key product launches cannot be fixed by resurrecting the speaker and headphone company’s old app, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said on Tuesday (Aug. 20).

Since its launch in May, customers have complained that the updated app did not recognize existing Sonos speakers and would not allow new speakers or headphones to be set up. Earlier this month, Spence said the company was lowering its fourth-quarter sales projections and delaying the launch of two major new products while it focuses on fixing the app.

Spence, who made the comments about the old app, which he refers to as “S2,” in an AMA discussion on Reddit after being asked if the company would make it available for download again to customers, said reverting back to it could actually make matters worse.

“The trick of course is that Sonos is not just the mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too,” Spence wrote on Reddit. “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 [sic] what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure this is disappointing. It was disappointing to me.”

Sonos announced it was cutting 6% of its global workforce — representing roughly 110 people — last week following a recent quarterly earnings announcement, during which executives disclosed they will spend $20 to $30 million fixing the app, investing in customer support and embarking on other initiatives to win back peeved buyers.