By: williamsburroughs
SONOS
Sonos can be described as the “new kid on the block”, when it comes to sound design and products. Their innovating way of thinking about user usability and their practical and elegant design has taken the market by storm. Not only does their speakers look pleasing, but their usability is remarkable. By downloading their Sonos app, you have option to access multiply streaming platforms like Spotify, Soundcloud, different radio stations and more. All these platforms can be used to play music or sound wireless to one or however many Sonos speakers your Wi-Fi is connected to.
Their vision was simple:
“To enable music lovers to play any song anywhere in their home”
The company was founded back in 2002 by John Macfarlane, Craig Shelburne, Tom Cullen and Trung Mai. Macfarlanes main goal was to create a wireless service. Almost none of the technology needed to make their vision come through existed. Their vision was plain fantasy at that point. It wasn’t until 2016, where CEO John Macfarlane announced the company’s shift to streaming music services and voice control instead of the original plan of local playback, they got a breakthrough. They started moving in the direction they were supposed to.
But their biggest innovative decision was in 2017, where they announced their collaboration with the well-known home furnishing company, IKEA. Their collaboration would consist of building Sonos’ technology into furniture sold by IKEA. The collection was named “Symfonisk” and as for now consists of two products; the wireless table lamp-speaker, and the wireless bookshelf-speaker. This is a great opportunity for both Sonos and IKEA to show off their unique design and their different approach to what wireless speakers has been before.
Joseph Schumpeter argued that interaction of development of new technology and competition between firms would result in economic growth (Heskett, 2017). Sonos’ products are unique in their way of making wireless services user friendly, but they have competitors with big brands and good reputation. Brands like Bang Olufsen, JBL and Bose are well-known and trusted by the community and has been delivering great products for years before Sonos where founded. This will create natural competition and the companies will always try to make the best products and be the best brand for the community. The speakers have a clean and “classy” look, designed to fit all type of homes.
Sonos, with their simple and minimalistic look, have grown tremendously the last couple of years. What Sonos has that some of the other companies lack, is the user-friendly platform. Their costumers can connect their device to Sonos’ product and play music remotely with ease. This makes Sonos unique and with the new collaboration with IKEA already on the way, Sonos’ future is looking brighter than ever.
Reference list:
Heskett, J. (2017). Design and the Creation of Value. London: Bloomsbury Academic
Sonos. (2019) Our Company.
https://www.sonos.com/no-no/our-company
Wikipedia. (2019) History of Sonos Products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonos#History_of_Sonos_Products
Making sense of art and design industries 