Sonos has notified customers[1] it will end support for a number of its legacy products released in the first 10 years of its existence, including the popular first-generation PLAY:5 speakers[2]. But some of these affected products were still on the market as late as 2015, such as the Connect and Connect:Amp, which would make them only five years old from the date of purchase.
How Sonos handles end-of-life product support
The reason Sonos ended support is that these first-generation products lack sufficient processing power and storage to accommodate new features.
End of service is relatively normal for consumer electronics products that are five years old or more, particularly personal computers and mobile devices. However, what is jarring about the way Sonos is approaching this end-of-product support for some of its devices is that it also affects products that have been recently introduced, such as the Beam connected soundbar.
Sonos has made its customers who own these legacy products aware that, if they continue to use them and have them attached to their Sonos mesh network, not only will those products stop receiving new functionality and fixes but all products connected to that same network will, as well.
To understand this better, this would be roughly analogous to Amazon stating that, if you bought a first-generation Echo speaker with Alexa, not only would it refuse to patch that model should you continue to use it, but it would stop patching your second and third-generation models as well. The impact on Amazon's customer loyalty would be devastating.
Or imagine a company like Apple telling its customers who use six-year-old iPhones or iPads that cannot take the latest iOS version that, if they are connected to the same