The wireless multi-room music system company has been around for six years.
The new ZonePlayer 120 (ZP120) includes a built-in Class D 55-watts-per-channel amplifier and has bettered the previous model’s range by virtue of SonosNet 2.0, the company’s latest wireless mesh network technology. Combined with state-of-the-art MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) wireless technology, it uses three antennas to send and receive music from a Mac or PC-based collection or stream online music sources through a home.
A companion, non-amplified piece, the ZP90 ($349), designed to work with an existing home theater or other amplified source, has also debuted. The company says that the extended range works between any mix of ZP120s and ZP90s and is compatible with all previous generations of Sonos ZonePlayers, controllers and ZoneBridges.
“We’re a fast-growing company in a slow-growing market,” observed co-founder Thomas S. Cullen in making the announcement, noting that the decrease in new-home builds has helped Sonos continue on a 50-percent-per-year sales-increase curve; the company has shipped 350,000 systems to date. “Most buyers might start with three rooms and then they buy more zones,” he said, citing data that show a third of Sonos buyers will add another zone within a month of the initial purchase. “And custom installers might do six zones or more, at first,” he added. “A third of all our households have four or more zones, and the average is climbing, because they can use Sonos systems without even opening a wall. But mostly, our customers are happy; they register an 85 to 90 percent satisfaction rate, and listen to twice as much music as before they bought our product.”
The Sonos customer demographics, said Cullen, are now predominantly male with household incomes in the $100,000 range – but buyers are not “tech” customers, per se. “We estimate that the potential market is 100 percent bigger than our installed base,” he said. Furthermore, he averred, Sonos can make market inroads at all market levels – and without infringing on the high-end service aspect of custom integrators’ business. In fact, half of the line’s distribution is through integrators, with the balance of sales consummated through a mix of regional retailers who do custom, a few online specialists like Crutchfield, Best Buy, and through Sonos’ own Web site.
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