Thursday, August 6, 2020

Sonos says its business held up despite Covid-19 impact | Music Ally

Audio firm Sonos saw its revenues drop by 4% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2020 (its fiscal Q3), but the company sees that as a good performance given the shutdown of many physical retailers due to Covid-19 lockdown measures.

Sonos managed to grow its direct-to-consumer (i.e. products sold from its website) revenues by 299% year-on-year to almost make up for the physical retail issues, and in the US and UK saw its total sales actually grow by 4% and 13% respectively as a result.

Sonos had already announced plans to lay off 12% of its staff and close several offices as a result of the pandemic – measures which it now says will save it around $7.5m next quarter.

Meanwhile, CEO Patrick Spence has continued to take shots at Sonos’s Big Tech rivals, criticising Amazon for “predatory pricing” in an interview with Protocol.

This relates to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s admission last week that his company sometimes sells Echo smart speakers for below their cost price, in promotions. “That’s illegal,” claimed Spence, turning his fire on Google as well as Amazon. “They just take money from their monopoly business, they just subsidise, subsidise, subsidise.”

Stuart Dredge


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