Sonos has completely screwed up. The well-known and respected speaker maker released a new version of its mobile app last May, but it turned out to be a disaster. This shouldn’t be that big of a deal; that’s what updates are for, but it is.

A terrible appShortly after launch, Sonos customers began protesting the poor quality of the mobile app on forums like Reddit, where one “megathread” now has 1,300 comments. The visual design was chaotic, there were barely any accessibility options, features like alarms or timers were removed, and support for local music libraries was gone.

Decline in sales and sharesThe fiasco with the app redesign has led to a drop in sales of equipment now controlled by this new app, with its stocks down 25% since the start of the problems. Although the company has promised to release updates, its customers are still disappointed and skeptical.

CEO apologizes. A month ago, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence acknowledged the issues and apologized for the situation that had arisen. He assured that fixing these issues was now the company’s “number one priority.” There have been a few updates, but the chaos continues, and the app currently has a 1.5 out of 5 rating on Google Play. And that’s not all.

Maybe we should restart the old appThe sheer volume of complaints led Sonos to consider a reasonable alternative: continue working to fix the problems in the new app while reverting to the old app, known as S2. The bug cost Sonos a fortune (between $20 million and $30 million, by Spence’s own estimates), but that idea also proved to be a dud.

Wait, we can’t. In an AMA session on Reddit, the Sonos CEO revealed that until recently he had hoped to be able to restore the old version of the app. However, that was not possible. As he explained to Reddit users:

“The catch, of course, is that Sonos is not just a mobile app, it’s also software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud. In the months since the new mobile app was released, we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud, so much so that today the S2 is less reliable and less stable than you remember it. After extensive testing, we’ve concluded that relaunching the S2 would make things worse, not better. I’m sure that’s disappointing.

Conclusion: Do not launch an application until you have tested it thoroughly“Looking back, it’s clear that we shouldn’t have implemented such a big change so quickly,” Spence added in a Threads thread. “It’s surprising that a company of this size would make such a serious mistake: A product should only be released after it has been thoroughly tested and evaluated. And not only that: there should always be the possibility of going back if something goes wrong with this new development.”

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