- The man in charge of Sonos has more to share
- He says Sonos is committed to the headphone category
- However, sound in the car is not a main priority right now
Sonos CEO Tom Conrad has been busy talking to outlets, including TechRadar, about his plans for the high-end audio company going forward, and in a new interview he confirms Sonos’ continued commitment to one product category — while tempering expectations in another.
Conrad spoke to Bloomberg’s Chris Welch about how Sonos intends to follow up the Sonos Ace headphones, which launched in June 2024, and the CEO emphasized that his company remains “really excited” about new pairs of headphones in the future.
It sounds like the Sonos Ace 2 headphones might not be too far off then, but Conrad expressed some regret at how the original pair was positioned in the market – and suggests that it might have been a better strategy to sell them to existing Sonos customers first.
The article continues below
“I think the thesis for Ace at launch was that it was a $5 or $6 billion category, we can make a pair of headphones that are as good or better than anything else on the market, and the opportunity is to go out there and do hand-to-hand battles with Sony and Bose and Apple and win,” says Conrad.
‘Strategic power’
While it seems likely that more headphones are on the way, don’t expect any sort of in-car audio solution from Sonos anytime soon. Sonos already has a partnership with Audi, but at the moment we’re not going to see much more than that – certainly not something like Cadillac’s AKG Dolby Atmos system, for example.
“As soon as you’re in the car, there’s a bunch of new gatekeepers,” says Conrad. “I’m looking for places where we have some strategic power, and it feels to me like in the car, it’s kind of hard to say we have a ton of strategic power.”
However, there is still a “small team” working on potential Sonos products for the car. “I would characterize what we do in the automotive industry as a hobby,” explains the CEO. “Let’s see what happens there.”
Future speculation aside, there are actual new products from Sonos on the market that you can go out and buy right now that fall under the company’s core focus on wireless speakers: there’s an updated Play speaker with added portability, as well as a cheaper version of the Era 100 — we’ve got all the details here.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
