Nick Wingfield on Sonos as an Acquisition Target (and a Juicy Tidbit Regarding a Former Apple Exec Who Wanted to Acquire Them)

Nick Wingfield, writing today’s The Briefing column for the paywalled (alas) The Information:

Sonos has always been a bit of an odd duck. There aren’t that many consumer electronics startups of its size created in the last quarter century (Sonos was founded in 2002) that have survived as independent companies. Its products are expensive relative to the wireless speakers that have flooded the market from big-name tech rivals like Amazon and no-name competitors from China. And yet, Sonos held on partly because it had a commitment to high-quality sound and an Apple-like dedication to user experience, both of which gave it a passionate fan base.

The events of the last year seem to have ruptured that relationship with many of its customers. Today, Spence’s replacement — Tom Conrad, a Sonos board member, who is now interim CEO — reportedly told staff he’s focused on repairing those relations. If he’s unsuccessful, it’s fair to wonder whether Sonos — whose market capitalization is around $1.7 billion — might be better off selling itself to a bigger rival like Amazon, Google or Apple.

Years ago, a former senior Apple executive told me he once begged Steve Jobs, who was then Apple’s CEO, to buy Sonos. Jobs wasn’t interested. A lot has changed since then, but the Sonos brand still might have enough cachet to interest a more powerful suitor.

A tidbit like that immediately set my mind racing as to who that “former senior Apple executive” was. It took me only a few seconds to make my guess: Scott Forstall. There are a few other senior Apple executives who I can imagine might have pushed Jobs to pursue an acquisition of Sonos, but none of them are “former”. They’re all still at Apple.

The only other possibility I can think of is Tony Fadell, but Fadell is a hardware guy and a builder by nature. He even titled his book Build. I think he’d have wanted to spearhead the creation of Apple’s own lineup of Sonos-like audio kit under the iPod brand, not acquire them. But Fadell is a maybe.

No one else really fits the bill. Bob Mansfeld? Bertrand Serlet? Nah. Jony Ive? Doesn’t sound right. Jon Rubinstein? He left Apple in April 2006, which I think predates Wingfield’s time covering Apple for The Wall Street Journal.

Update: Well, my first guess was wrong, but my second was right. I asked Tony Fadell and he confirmed to me it was him, saying it was back in the very earliest days of Sonos, when Sonos was set to debut with a device featuring an obviously iPod-like scroll wheel for input. Jobs wanted to sue (of course). But Fadell, after meeting with the founders, wanted to buy them, and made his case to Jobs, to no avail, several times circa 2003. Fadell said his pitch was basically “Seriously, we are all about music. Customers want this. I want this.” And Jobs’s response was, according to Fadell, “No one wants what they are selling.”

(Here in 2025, there are an awful lot of Apple users who also own an awful lot of Sonos devices who would disagree with Jobs on that.)

★ Tuesday, 14 January 2025