Smart speaker maker Sonos recently posted strong earnings for the first quarter of 2023. During its earnings call with investors, the company’s CEO mocked its main competitors Amazon, Apple, and Google for failing to do “anything interesting” in the audio market.
The Verge reports that the market leader in multi-room audio, Sonos, delivered strong earnings and outperformed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter of 2023, partly due to holiday discounts on its products. During the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Patrick Spence also made fun of some of Sonos’ main competitors in the tech industry, including Amazon, Google, and Apple, for barely putting up a fight in recent years.
During the call, Spence expressed optimism regarding Sonos’ financial results, sales momentum, and future product roadmap. He also emphasized the business’s lack of competition during the crucial holiday quarter. He noted that none of its main smart speaker competitors introduced new audio hardware, and that Apple’s second-generation HomePod debuted after the quarter had already ended.
Spence stated: “We’ve gone through fiscal Q1, which is the height of the consumer electronics and audio season and, you know, it was… we’ve seen some of the traditional players go heavy discounting and, kind of like a traditional playbook for C.E. that, you know, we’ve always fought against and don’t really believe in. And then, you know, the big tech players, we just haven’t seen them active and we haven’t seen them, you know, doing anything interesting.”
In contrast, Sonos is investing heavily in its product roadmap, setting new standards in its existing categories while also investing in four new ones. The Era 300 and Era 100 speakers, which were created to highlight spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, are among the latest speakers the company will be adding to its high-end home audio lineup in the near future. Also in development is a new model of the portable Sonos Move speaker. According to Sonos, one of these new product categories will be introduced in 2023.
Amazon only unveiled a redesigned Echo Dot and a new white color option for the top-tier Echo Studio at its fall 2022 hardware event, which was light on new smart speakers. The standard Echo speaker hasn’t been updated since 2020, while the dated Nest Audio is Google’s most recent home audio offering. Spence noted this lack of activity from these tech behemoths and stated: “I just feel like there’s others that are probably questioning their investments in this area, and we are investing in four new categories. We are going to raise the bar in our existing categories. I mean, we’ve got a lot going on.”
Breitbart News reported in 2022 that Google attempted to shut down Sonos with lawsuits, claiming that the company infringed on a number of its patents. The two companies have been locked in an ongoing legal war for years, with Sonos previously winning a case against the Masters of the Universe. The smaller company claimed that the lawsuits were designed to “retaliate against Sonos for speaking out against Google’s monopolistic practices.”
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan