The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sonos, the high-end speaker company, continues to reel from its disastrous app update last May. The company lost revenue and approximately $600 million in market capitalization. Then came the layoffs and a CEO exit. WSJ’s Ben Cohen explains. See The Journal live! Take our survey! Further Listening: - The Glitch That Crashed Millions of Computers - The Snowballing Problems at Vail Resorts Further Reading: - The $500 Million Debacle at Sonos That Just Won’t End - Sonos Finally Hits the Hard Reset Button Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Updating your software.
0:07.3	It's one of our modern, common chores.
0:10.3	Mostly, it's annoying, inconvenient, but we do it because it's supposed to make sure our stuff works better.
0:17.6	So when a software update somehow makes things worse, people get mad.
0:23.3	Like back in 2014, when an iPhone update caused a bunch of people's phones to crash.
0:29.4	The latest software update called iOS 8.0.1 meant to fix software bugs, reportedly crashing some user's phones instead.
0:39.2	Or in 2016, when an update to the Nest thermostat left people angry and cold.
0:45.1	Their internet-connected thermostats have been malfunctioning,
0:48.2	ever since they got a software upgrade last month.
0:50.8	Or last year, when a crowd-Strike software update caused major travel delays.
0:55.6	It was a faulty software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that caused disruptions
1:01.0	across multiple industries. In the best case scenarios, companies act fast and fix the problems,
1:08.6	and we can all move on.
1:18.6	But our colleague Ben Cohen recently wrote about a software update that has plagued a company for months now. It was so buggy that it turned into one of the most disastrous software updates in the recent history of consumer technology,
1:26.6	which I know sounds like a bit of an
1:29.9	exaggeration, but it's kind of not.
1:32.9	The company with the software update from hell is Sonos.
1:36.8	It makes high-tech speakers that are controlled through its app.
1:40.3	And when Sonos updated that app last spring, a lot of users suddenly ran into all kinds of issues.
1:46.8	Many couldn't do basic things like connect to their devices.
1:50.8	Recently, they've had an app update.
1:53.6	Oh my God, I can't get anything to play on it.
	...

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