The launch of the Sub Mini – an expected addition to Sonos’ line of connected audio devices – appears to have been delayed, the company said after its quarterly earnings report this week.
The device was expected literally from day to day. But Sonos confirmed to The Verge on Wednesday that it has “decided to move its expected product launch from Q4 2022 to Q1 23″and the product is almost certainly a Sub Mini. This puts its launch in the window between October and December of calendar year 2022.
The Sonos Sub Mini has apparently been accidentally leaked for the first time on the Sonos mobile app. In November, a Reddit user took screenshots with links to its name and general appearance. The Verge later accessed images and details of the device, describing it as a cheaper, smaller, cylindrical younger brother compared to the expensive rectangular Sonos Sub.
In June, an FCC filing appeared confirming some of what we’ve already seen in the Sub Mini leaks. Based on the launch timelines for other recent Sonos products, filing in June would have meant the device would hit store shelves sometime between July and September, and is in line with Sonos’ previous statements about how much it expected to make in its 2022 financial report. year ending in September.
Sonos made a name for itself with connected speakers that were primarily focused on playing music throughout the home, but over the past few years it has stepped up its focus on home theater with Arc, Beam, Ray, Sub, and One products, all of which can work. together to provide surround sound.
The company has also been focusing on smart speaker functionality lately, first with support for Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri, and more recently with its own voice control service. When Sonos went public in 2018, its paperwork and analyst assessments cited dependence on Google or Amazon smart assistant technology as one of the company’s key vulnerabilities.
This week’s quarterly earnings report showed the company is falling short of expectations. Executives cited challenging market conditions and the impact of inflation on consumer spending as major concerns over the past few months.