Bijan Sabet

Some thoughts about Sonos

Sonos has hit a major milestone - they are now serving 1M rooms.

I’ve been a Sonos user for years. We are building a new home and we are going to stick with Sonos in that home too. The ability to have a simple, easy whole home audio system that is controllable from the ipad and iphone is just fantastic.

There are lots of reasons why Sonos could have failed

-a startup building consumer electronics?

-built a company with two offices on either coast (santa barbara and cambridge) and not in silicon valley

-initially aimed at the high end of the market and sold directly to consumers

-big competitors (apple, bose)

Earlier this year, the sonos founders talked to gigaom about lessoned learned. My favorite one mentioned is the attention to usability

“Usability is the bones of the product, not the skin”

Love that.

The other thing not mentioned but I have seen first hand is their customer support. It’s absolutely amazing. Before we had Apple Stores, customer support for consumer products was like a unicorn. It just didn’t exist.

But Sonos from the very beginning had (and continues to have) excellent customer support. They have people that will return emails. They have folks that answer the phone with great attitudes and are super helpful. It’s a a big deal.

I’m so impressed with Sonos. The products and the company.

Well done.

Update : @stevenkane just sent me an email reminding me - there is a Sonos app for Android too.