Background on Sonos
- π Sonos grew from almost nothing to a multi-billion dollar manufacturer of wireless headphones and speakers under Patrick Spence's leadership.
- πΈ The company's hardware is highly regarded, with people willing to pay $500 for their products.
- π Sonos commoditized the headphone and speaker market, but struggled to continuously extract money from customers after market saturation.
The Disastrous App Launch
- π± Sonos released a rewritten mobile app, which was half-baked and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
- π¨ The app update rendered existing products useless and removed basic features, prompting a flood of bad reviews on the App Store.
- π The bad reviews were so severe that Apple had to step in and remove them.
- πΉ The CEO issued a YouTube apology, but it was not enough to save his job.