Sonos Slashes 100 Jobs After Mobile App Fiasco, May Bring Back Old App

Sonos has laid off approximately 100 of its employees, which is a mere 14 months after the beleaguered smart home audio company dropped roughly 150 of its 1,800 workforce. The timing of this comes after product delays plus the well-documented (and disastrous) rollout of the Sonos app, not to mention the company's earnings call last week, in which we're sure investors demanded accountability.

According to a statement made by Sonos to a popular tech site, the once haloed company many likened to the Apple of audio products, has confirmed that it's entered a second round of layoffs following a similar one in 2023. In the statement, Patrick Spence, Sonos CEO, defended the move, saying that "this action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos’ product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success."

Spence went on to add that the app kerfuffle, and more importantly, the fix for it hasn't been affected by this shakeup. He declared that is "our continued commitment to the app recovery and delighting our customers remains our priority and we are confident that today’s actions will not impact our ability to deliver on that promise.”

Let's be clear, Spence made no direct mention that the layoffs are directly related to the app. Apparently, the 100 ex-employees came from various divisions, such as product engineering, marketing, software quality, and platform/infrastructure. However, it's not hard to see that the problematic app may have had something to do with the decision.

In fact, Sonos has had to delay two new products to solve the app issue, which probably demonstrates how bad the situation is. In the last few months since Sonos rolled out a major app update, users have experienced widespread functionality and stability issues. Some experienced complete lockout from their libraries, while for others, the app completely broke their systems or messed with their settings.

The reception for the app update has been so bad that throngs of long-time Sonos fans have either left the brand or boycotted it completely. As for repercussions for the company, fixing the app won't be cheap. Besides the delayed products, Spence told investors in the earnings call last week that getting the app up to snuff will be around $20 million to $30 million. Yikes.