Sonos has laid off approximately 3% of its workforce with the reductions concentrated in its user experience, product and design teams, according to Bloomberg. A company spokesperson confirmed the cuts, which included some leadership positions, saying they were “about removing layers and streamlining our teams so that they can execute with greater autonomy and speed.”
In a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg, CEO Tom Conrad framed the cuts as necessary for the company’s continued recovery rather than a setback to it. “I want a Sonos that moves with more conviction and more velocity,” he wrote. “Fewer months in conference rooms. More prototypes in our labs. More decisions made and executed. More exceptional products in the world for our customers.”
This is the second round of job cuts at Sonos this year. In April, the company eliminated a number of marketing positions as part of a restructuring of that division under a new chief marketing officer. Unlike a wave of recent tech layoffs elsewhere in the industry that companies have attributed to AI-driven efficiency gains, Sonos says that is not the case here. “We’re very rapidly embracing AI in all our processes but this structural change is not a result of AI,” a spokesperson said.
The cuts come as Sonos works to move past a difficult stretch that began in May 2024, when the company rolled out an overhauled mobile app that was widely criticised for bugs and missing functionality. The botched rollout damaged customer trust in Sonos and its broader hardware ecosystem and contributed to a decline in sales. Sonos subsequently paused new product releases for over a year to focus on fixing the app.
The company has continued to express confidence in its recovery since. “We have changed the trajectory of the business,” Conrad said during Sonos’s most recent earnings call. “After a challenging period, Sonos is beginning to grow again and we are seeing our progress show up across the company.” Sonos has projected fiscal third-quarter revenue of $355 million to $375 million, representing year-over-year growth of roughly 3% to 9%.
Earlier this month, Sonos also began testing a redesigned version of its app aimed at offering a more intuitive layout, including new navigation tabs and an updated volume control. Conrad described it as “not a new app, but a new way of navigating Sonos inside the app you already have.” In a Reddit post discussing the redesign, he said the team had “spent hundreds of hours over the past year watching real customers use the Sonos app, longtime owners and brand new ones alike.”