Sonos (company)
| Sonos, Inc.
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|---|---|
_logo.svg){kind=logo} |
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| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | US83570H1086 |
| founding | 2002 |
| Seat | Santa Barbara , United States |
| management |
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| Number of employees | 1200 |
| sales | US $ 535 million |
| Branch | Consumer electronics |
| Website | www.sonos.com |
| As of December 20, 2017 | |
Sonos is a US manufacturer of audio - consumer electronics , based in Santa Barbara , California.
Sonos develops and produces active loudspeaker systems and hi-fi components that are wirelessly networked with each other via WLAN . The system can use local audio files or music streaming services and play them back in several rooms at the same time. The audio system is controlled with an app on the smartphone , tablet or desktop computer , and partly by voice control .
history
Sonos was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, Craig Shelburne, Tom Cullen and Trung Mai. The name Sonos comes from the Latin word sonus (German 'sound'). Based on the fact that the word Sonos is a palindrome , the Sonos logo is designed in such a way that it can also be read rotated 180 degrees ( ambigram ).
In January 2017, founder and CEO John MacFarlane left the company and handed over the position to previous COO Patrick Spence.
In October 2017, Sonos announced its collaboration with Amazon so that its Alexa voice assistant can also control Sonos speakers. Additionally, Sonos wants to work with every other voice assistant on the market.
In December 2017, the company announced together with the furniture retailer IKEA that it would develop and market multi-room loudspeaker components together. The two resulting loudspeakers came on the market in 2019 and are both based on the Sonos Play: 1, with a lamp integrated in one of the loudspeakers.
technology
The speakers build a proprietary, proprietary AES -verschlüsseltes IEEE 802.11 b / g / n on the network that a peer-to-peer - mesh network form.
criticism
By integrating proprietary software , the user is dependent on Sonos' corporate policy and its software.
Sonos is criticized for collecting unnecessarily large amounts of user data. In 2017, the company expanded the scope again with a revision of its data protection declaration. If a customer refuses to send the data, software updates will no longer be made available, which, according to the Sonos spokesman, means that the devices will no longer work as usual.
In July 2018, Sonos introduced compulsory registration for all of its devices. Since then, it has not been possible to continue using the speakers without a customer account, which annoyed many customers.
The Sonos system forces the use of SMB1 / NTLMv1 for local music libraries, whose security problems became known internationally through WannaCry .
Uniform software runs on all Sonos products and is updated regularly to expand the range of functions. Since newer functions have higher hardware requirements than older products, their software cannot be updated indefinitely. For this reason, Sonos introduced a so-called trade-up program at the end of 2019, which gives customers the option of receiving a 30% discount on a new product if they put an old one into "recycling mode". This locks the device permanently and makes resale or further use impossible, whereby technically fully functional devices are devalued and disposed of, a form of planned obsolescence . The resulting massive criticism of Sonos prompted CEO Patrick Spence in January 2020 to enable another option: Affected products would be provided with updates until May 2020 and could then be used as usual. However, it is not possible to combine older devices with newer devices and the latest software in one system as before. In March 2020, Sonos completely stopped the forced blocking of the products in the trade-up program after persistent criticism.
Products
Sonos offers single speakers:
| product | Start (USA) | Linguistic
assistance |
Analogous
Line-in |
stereo | AirPlay | 2006 | 2008 | 2009 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZP100 ZonePlayer | 06.2004 | ||||||||||||||||||
| ZP80 | 01.2006 | x | |||||||||||||||||
| CONNECT: AMP
(ZonePlayer120) |
08/2008 | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||
| CR200 | 08.2009 | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||
| Play: 5
(ZonePlayer S5) |
11.2009 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||
| Play: 3 | 06.2011 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||
| Sub | 05.2012 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||
| Playbar | 02.2013 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||
| Play: 1 | 08.2013 | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||
| Play: 5 2nd Gen | 09.2015 | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||
| Playbase | 05.2017 | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||||
| port | 08.2019 | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||||||
| Beam (Voice Control) | 06.2018 | x | x | x | x | x | |||||||||||||
| AMP | 12.2018 | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||
| Sonos One (SL) | 03.2019 | (x) | x | x | x | ||||||||||||||
| Move | 09.2019 | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||||
| SYMFONISK (IKEA) | 03.2019 | x | x | x | |||||||||||||||
| Arc | 05.2020 | x | x | x | x | ||||||||||||||
| Sub 3rd gen | 05.2020 | x | |||||||||||||||||
| Five | 05.2020 | x | x | x |
Speakers (Play: 1, Play: 3, Play: 5. Sonos One (SL), SYMFONISK) can be connected to form stereo pairs.
In addition, the product range includes the Soundbar Playbar that Soundbase Play Base and Sonos Beam and the subwoofer SUB for the realization of 2.1-, 3.1- and 5.1 - Surround Sound .
The CONNECT: AMP network amplifier, which was updated by the Amp in 2018, is also available for the integration of passive loudspeakers. The Connect transmission converter is available for using analog hi-fi music devices.
Sonos Move
The Sonos Move is a portable loudspeaker that runs on a battery. The 3 kg loudspeaker was presented at IFA 2019 and, in addition to a connection via Bluetooth or AirPlay 2, also works via a WLAN connection, which means that it can be connected to other Sonos speakers across the room.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c company data on bloomberg.com
- ↑ a b Léna Garcia: Sonos Cuts Jobs. In: independent.com. March 12, 2016, accessed December 21, 2017 .
- ^ Janko Roettgers : Sonos Swaps Out CEO, Founder to Stay With Company. In: variety.com. January 17, 2017, accessed December 20, 2017 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Tunze: Speakers Sonos One: On a word. In: faz.net. October 12, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2017 .
- ↑ Tobias Költzsch: MULTIROOM-SOUND, Ikea and Sonos agree on cooperation. In: golem.de. December 6, 2017, accessed December 20, 2017 .
- ↑ Symfonisk: Ikea will sell Sonos speakers from August. In: t3n.de. July 7, 2019, accessed November 28, 2019 .
- ↑ Ikea Symfonisk in the test: The cheap Sonos WLAN speakers are so good. In: t3n.de. August 4, 2019, accessed November 28, 2019 .
- ↑ Sonos, Inc .: Sonos CONNECT Product Guide: AMP. (PDF) May 2017, accessed on December 21, 2017 .
- ↑ Zack Whittaker: Sonos says users must accept new privacy policy or devices may "cease to function". In: ZDNet. August 21, 2017, accessed on July 18, 2018 (English): "if a customer chooses not to acknowledge the privacy statement, the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease "
- ↑ Daniel AJ Sokolov: Sonos demands more data, otherwise the broadcast threatens to close. In: heise online . Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, August 23, 2017, accessed on July 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Ingo Pakalski: Music streaming: Sonos customers are annoyed by the requirement to have accounts. In: Golem.de . Golem Media GmbH, July 16, 2018, accessed on July 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Leo Becker: Sonos annoys users with forced accounts. In: heise online. Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, July 16, 2018, accessed on July 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Using a NAS Drive with Sonos. Sonos Support, accessed March 26, 2019 .
- ^ Sonos Support. Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
- ^ Matthias Schmid: Edel-Elektroschrott - audio company Sonos urges customers to dispose of devices. In: srf.ch . February 4, 2020, accessed February 4, 2020 .
- ↑ End of software updates for older Sonos products. January 21, 2020, accessed February 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Sonos stomps in controversial recycling mode. March 6, 2020, accessed March 7, 2020 .
- ↑ Sonos Beam - Smart TV Soundbar with Alexa in Review | Kevin Kyburz . In: Kevin Kyburz . June 27, 2018 ( kevinkyburz.com [accessed June 28, 2018]).
- ↑ Connect: Amp - stereo amplifier. Retrieved January 19, 2019 (Swiss Standard German).
- ↑ Amp: Our best WiFi amplifier of all time. Retrieved January 19, 2019 (Swiss Standard German).
- ↑ Connect: The stereo upgrade for music streaming. Retrieved January 19, 2019 (Swiss Standard German).
- ↑ IFA: Sonos presents the Move, the first battery-operated loudspeaker from Sonos. In: Techgarage. September 7, 2019, accessed on September 7, 2019 (Swiss Standard German).