Sonos broke its app so badly that it has to delay new hardware to fix it

The Sonos companion app is essential for those who rely on the company’s excellent headphones and speakers, as it handles setup and playback controls. Sonos recently overhauled its mobile app, giving it a new design and fixing a slew of annoying bugs. As a result, users flooded its Google Play Store listing with one-star reviews demanding a fix for the now-broken app. To address user concerns, Sonos will be delaying two hardware launches and instead focusing on optimizing its mobile app.

While Sonos recently released the Roam 2 speaker and Ace headphones, the company had two more major products planned for this year. However, following the mobile app fiasco, CEO Patrick Spence announced that Sonos will delay hardware debuts in order to improve app performance. During the company’s third-quarter earnings call (via The edge), he claimed:

We believe our focus should be on the app before anything else. This means we must delay the two major new product releases we had planned for Q4 until our app experience meets the level of quality we, our customers, and our partners expect from Sonos.

The move makes good business sense, given the app’s primary role in setting up and controlling Sonos hardware. No matter how exceptional its upcoming speakers are, users would be stuck with a subpar experience if the core app was buggy and slow. So by pausing their launch to patch the app, the company could save the reputation of its future products from being tainted by messy software.

There’s currently no official word on what the planned products are or their new launch window. However, recent leaks suggest that one of them will be Sonos’ flagship soundbar, internally dubbed the Lasso.