I'm surprised they're issuing a statement admitting they made a "misstep". Surely they knew in advance the original update (removing support for their earliest adopters) would be received extremely negatively. I would have thought their comms strategy would have been to hold the line and wait for it to die down rather than revising their status so quickly.
Either way the damage is done. It's become clear through the "recycling" program, the revision of the Sonos ONE after only 16 months and now the lobotomizing of the original Play 5 that they are not going to stand behind their products like they used to. I'm not buying more $400 speakers from a company that's aim is to force upgrades by deprecating support to bring up their quarterly sales figures.
Time to buy some Chromecast or Airplay 2 devices and sign up for an ecosystem from a company that has a different revenue stream and doesn't need to force rapid hardware refreshes.
Either way the damage is done. It's become clear through the "recycling" program, the revision of the Sonos ONE after only 16 months and now the lobotomizing of the original Play 5 that they are not going to stand behind their products like they used to. I'm not buying more $400 speakers from a company that's aim is to force upgrades by deprecating support to bring up their quarterly sales figures.
Time to buy some Chromecast or Airplay 2 devices and sign up for an ecosystem from a company that has a different revenue stream and doesn't need to force rapid hardware refreshes.