At a Glance

  • Sonos rolled out a series of app updates in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 after intensive customer listening, aiming to drive customer advocacy. President and CEO Thomas Conrad said this during last week's Q3 2026 earnings call.
  • The sound system company spent months listening to customers to understand how they use the app. Subsequently, the company introduced multiple app navigation improvements, including familiar tab navigation, optimized core controls such as volume, and smart mechanisms that make the sound system appear automatically when customers need it.
  • Conrad emphasized that how these changes were made is as important as what was changed. He said, "We brought customers into the process through home studies, beta programs, and public previews, and their feedback shaped every iteration. These co-creation efforts are central to driving the return of customer advocacy, a trend consistently reflected in our own metrics and on social media."

Deep Dive

Customer advocacy remains one of Sonos's primary paths to profitable growth.

"In recent earnings calls, I've discussed five dimensions for driving profitable growth: product innovation, customer advocacy, more targeted marketing, geographic expansion, and capturing emerging trends," Conrad said. "We are making progress on all of these."

According to the earnings report, Sonos's third-quarter revenue was $375 million, up 9% year-over-year, near the high end of the company's guidance range. This growth accelerated from the 2% growth in the first half of the year.

"These third-quarter results confirm the business inflection point I mentioned on the last earnings call," Conrad stated.

The company also reported net income of $29.9 million, a significant improvement from the $3.4 million loss in the same period last year.

After struggling two years ago due to a botched app launch that damaged the business and led to the departure of the former CEO, Sonos has turned things around.

Sonos is seeing results: according to Conrad, the number of household users is growing, and customer lifetime value is expanding.

To restore growth, the company focused on winning back existing customers and is now focused on acquiring new ones. The team has multiple channels for engaging with customers.

"On customer advocacy, you've heard us talk about how we work directly with customers on Reddit, customers in beta programs, and all relevant groups to understand how they use our products and improve based on their real feedback," Conrad said.

The company also teased a product launch event in September. While Conrad did not reveal details about upcoming products, he discussed the role of conversational computing and predictive intelligence for the home.

"The industry discussion about AI in the home mostly focuses on who has the best model. We think that's the wrong question," Conrad said.

"The lasting value will be in everything around the model in real homes: hardware capable of high-quality conversation in every room, systems that already understand home layouts and lifestyles, and networks that connect speakers, services, and devices to turn requests into coordinated actions. This is the operating environment for AI in the home, and Sonos has been building it for 20 years," he said.