Sonos CEO says the company remains 'really excited' about headphones — but in-car audio isn't a priority

• The man in charge of Sonos has more to share
• He says Sonos is committed to the headphones category
• In-car audio is not a main priority right now, however

Sonos CEO Tom Conrad has been busy speaking to outlets including TechRadar about his plans for the high-end audio company going forward, and in a new interview he confirms Sonos's continued commitment to one product category — while dampening down expectations in another.

Conrad spoke to Chris Welch at Bloomberg about how Sonos intends to follow up on the Sonos Ace headphones that launched in June 2024, and the CEO emphasized that his company remains "really excited" about new pairs of headphones in the future.

It sounds as though the Sonos Ace 2 headphones might not be too far off then, but Conrad did express some regret about how the original pair were positioned on the market — and suggests selling them to existing Sonos customers first may have been a better strategy.

"I think the thesis for Ace at launch was it's a $5 billion or $6 billion category, we can make a pair of headphones that is as good or better than anything else on the market, and the opportunity is to go out there and do hand-to-hand combat with Sony and Bose and Apple and win," says Conrad.

'Strategic power'

While it seems likely that more headphones are on the way, don't expect any kind of in-car audio solution from Sonos in the near future. Sonos already has a partnership with Audi, but at the moment we're not going to see much more than that — certainly nothing along the lines of Cadillac's AKG Dolby Atmos system, for example.

"As soon as you're in the car, there are a bunch of new gatekeepers," says Conrad. "I look for venues where we have some strategic power, and it feels to me like in the car, it's a little hard to make the case that we have a ton of strategic power."

However, there is still a "small team" working on potential Sonos products for the car. "I would characterize what we're doing in automotive as a hobby," explains the CEO. "Let's see what happens there."

As well as future speculation, there are actual new products from Sonos on the market you can go out and buy right now, which fall under the company's core focus on wireless speakers: there's a refreshed Play speaker with added portability, as well as a cheaper version of the Era 100 — we've got all the details here.

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