Apple Needs to Buy Sonos

Hello, friends and family!

Ok, so let’s take a break and talk about some consumer products. I started writing this post back in April 2020 right around the time I took a stock position in Sonos but never quite finished the post mostly because I was distracted with evaluating a move. At the time, I was re-reading the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and enamored by value investing.

“Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’”
Warren Buffet

So, I went out looking around for a companies that I very much “liked”, were sold off and that I wanted to hold for the long term. Thus, Sonos. Sonos has it figured out. I love my Sonos setup in my home and always excited to think what new products or services they are coming out next. Here is my current setup:

Two Sonos Three (since discontinued) for my office
One Sonos Soundbar (original), Sonos Subwoofer and Two Sonos Ones (original) for the basement home theater
One Sonos Move for the kitchen and on the go

I’m very interested in taking advantage of the Sonos Upgrade Program to get some of the new equipment such as the Arc or Beam. Sonos really has their ecosystem figured out —

Sounds great or good enough for me
Easy setup and configuration
Intuitive and effective mobile integration
Seamless integration with all my streaming services including Apple Music, Spotify, Nugs.net, MLB.com.
Central control of every room
High quality and reliable hardware
It just works

The Sonos Move was my latest addition and it travels with me in the backyard or in the garage when I’m working on my Jeep. It’s a bit too big for me to take to the park and use via bluetooth but that’s an option as well. The Sonos product family reminds me of Apple products from a technology and design perspective. It’s probably where the Apple HomePod or the Amazon Echo’s wants to go long term but Sonos owns the wireless home speaker space in my mind. I can’t think of a competitor that is close. The Apple HomePod never really captured my attention but I’m sure its a good product. It will be curious to see how the smart speaker market and the home speaker market come together. Sonos does have a Sonos One with Google Voice and Amazon Alexa integration but the value of Sonos to me is the mesh of high quality audio speakers throughout the home. I own separate, lower cost, lower quality Amazon Echo devices to fill that need.

On top of all of that, their integrations and services are killer. All my music services — Amazon Music, Apple Music, Audible, MLB.com, SiriusXM, Spotify, LivePhish+, Nugs.net, Calm and TuneIn. Yikes — all of that at the tip of my fingers from any of my home speakers. There is also Sonos Radio / Sonos Radio HD — Sonos Radio is an internet radio service available exclusively on Sonos. It features 60,000 radio stations from around the world, including a curated selection of original stations. With a subscription to Sonos Radio HD, you can access premium features* such as high-definition audio quality, access to more exclusive original content, unlimited skips, and ad-free music. Clearly, Sonos is expanding their ecosystem play.

Sonos feels like they are innovating faster than Apple in this specific home theater speaker space. It would strike me as a perfect complement to the Apple eco-system and push Apple ahead of Google and Amazon.
There are others that think this as well as news of such a move pushed the stock up in Nov/Dec 2020. Regardless, I’m a huge fan and stock holder — keep up the good work Sonos.