A day after announcing that CEO Patrick Spence is departing the company, Sonos revealed that chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin is also leaving. Bouvat-Merlin had the role since 2023.
As first reported by Bloomberg, Sonos will not fill the chief product officer role. Instead, Tom Conrad, the interim CEO Sonos announced yesterday, will take on the role’s responsibilities. In an email to staff cited by Bloomberg (you can read the letter in its entirety at The Verge), Conrad explained:
With my stepping in as CEO, the board, Max, and I have agreed that my background makes the chief product officer role redundant. Therefore, Max’s role is being eliminated and the product organization will report directly to me. I’ve asked Max to advise me over the next period to ensure a smooth transition and I am grateful that he’s agreed to do that.
In May, Sonos released an update to its app that led to customers, many of them long-time users, revolting over broken features, like accessibility capabilities and the ability to set timers. Sonos expects that remedying the app and Sonos’ reputation will cost it at least $20 million to $30 million.
As head of the company, Spence received a lot of blame and has also been criticized for not apologizing for the problems until July. However, numerous reports have also attributed blame to Bouvat-Merlin.
After an app update rollout that can best be described as disastrous, Sonos is seeking a new CEO. The company announced today that Patrick Spence, who had been CEO for eight years, is stepping down.
In its announcement, Sonos said its board of directors and Spence “agreed” on the decision while saying it was unrelated to the company’s fiscal Q1 2025 earnings, which it will report next month.
Spence joined Sonos as chief commercial officer in 2012 after leaving Blackberry. Under his tenure, Sonos branched into new categories, including portable speakers and spatial audio. But in May, Sonos issued an app update that broke basic and critical features. Sonos employees said the update was built on outdated code and infrastructure, impacting users’ ability to do things like access and manage local libraries, set sleep timers, and edit song queues and playlists.
The employees also said the app was rushed so that it could be ready in time for Sonos’ first wireless headphones, Ace. In July, following much public backlash, Spence apologized and promised regular updates until the new app was as good as the old app. But even today, users are still reporting problems with the software.
In August, Spence said Sonos would spend $20 million to $30 million “in the short term” to fix the app. Soon after, Sonos laid off 100 people. Sonos’ stock price declined approximately 13 percent since the app update, Bloomberg noted. Sonos execs, including Spence, received a $72,000 bonus in 2023 but did not get bonuses for the fiscal year that ended on September 30.
Spence will receive a cash severance of $1,875,000, per SEC filings. He will also get $7,500 per month and serve as a Sonos board advisor until June, and his unvested shares will vest.
Tom Conrad, who has been on Sonos’ board since 2017, took the role of interim CEO today. Sonos plans on having a new CEO by February via the help of a third-party firm. In the meantime, Conrad will get $175,000 per month and receive $2.65 million in stock shares.
Op-ed: TVs miss opportunity for real improvement by prioritizing corporate needs.
The TV industry is hitting users over the head with AI and other questionable gimmicks Credit: Getty
If you asked someone what they wanted from TVs released in 2025, I doubt they’d say “more software and AI.” Yet, if you look at what TV companies have planned for this year, which is being primarily promoted at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas this week, software and AI are where much of the focus is.
The trend reveals the implications of TV brands increasingly viewing themselves as software rather than hardware companies, with their products being customer data rather than TV sets. This points to an alarming future for smart TVs, where even premium models sought after for top-end image quality and hardware capabilities are stuffed with unwanted gimmicks.
LG’s remote regression
LG has long made some of the best—and most expensive—TVs available. Its OLED lineup, in particular, has appealed to people who use their TVs to watch Blu-rays, enjoy HDR, and the like. However, some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users’ needs.
Take the new remote. Formerly known as the Magic Remote, LG is calling the 2025 edition the AI Remote. That is already likely to dissuade people who are skeptical about AI marketing in products (research suggests there are many such people). But the more immediately frustrating part is that the new remote doesn’t have a dedicated button for switching input modes, as previous remotes from LG and countless other remotes do.
To use the AI Remote to change the TV’s input—a common task for people using their sets to play video games, watch Blu-rays or DVDs, connect their PC, et cetera—you have to long-press the Home Hub button. Single-pressing that button brings up a dashboard of webOS (the operating system for LG TVs) apps. That functionality isn’t immediately apparent to someone picking up the remote for the first time and detracts from the remote’s convenience.
By overlooking other obviously helpful controls (play/pause, fast forward/rewind, and numbers) while including buttons dedicated to things like LG’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and Amazon Alexa, LG missed an opportunity to update its remote in a way centered on how people frequently use TVs. That said, it feels like user convenience didn’t drive this change. Instead, LG seems more focused on getting people to use webOS apps. LG can monetize app usage through, i.e., getting a cut of streaming subscription sign-ups, selling ads on webOS, and selling and leveraging user data.
Moving from hardware provider to software platform
LG, like many other TV OEMs, has been growing its ads and data business. Deals with data analytics firms like Nielsen give it more incentive to acquire customer data. Declining TV margins and rock-bottom prices from budget brands (like Vizio and Roku, which sometimes lose money on TV hardware sales and make up for the losses through ad sales and data collection) are also pushing LG’s software focus. In the case of the AI Remote, software prioritization comes at the cost of an oft-used hardware capability.
Further demonstrating its motives, in September 2023, LG announced intentions to “become a media and entertainment platform company” by offering “services” and a “collection of curated content in products, including LG OLED and LG QNED TVs.” At the time, the South Korean firm said it would invest 1 trillion KRW (about $737.7 million) into its webOS business through 2028.
Low TV margins, improved TV durability, market saturation, and broader economic challenges are all serious challenges for an electronics company like LG and have pushed LG to explore alternative ways to make money off of TVs. However, after paying four figures for TV sets, LG customers shouldn’t be further burdened to help LG accrue revenue.
Google TVs gear up for subscription-based features
There are numerous TV manufacturers, including Sony, TCL, and Philips, relying on Google software to power their TV sets. Numerous TVs announced at CES 2025 will come with what Google calls Gemini Enhanced Google Assistant. The idea that this is something that people using Google TVs have requested is somewhat contradicted by Google Assistant interactions with TVs thus far being “somewhat limited,” per a Lowpass report.
Nevertheless, these TVs are adding far-field microphones so that they can hear commands directed at the voice assistant. For the first time, the voice assistant will include Google’s generative AI chatbot, Gemini, this year—another feature that TV users don’t typically ask for. Despite the lack of demand and the privacy concerns associated with microphones that can pick up audio from far away even when the TV is off, companies are still loading 2025 TVs with far-field mics to support Gemini. Notably, these TVs will likely allow the mics to be disabled, like you can with other TVs using far-field mics. But I still ponder about features/hardware that could have been implemented instead.
Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported.
“For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.
The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”
She also pointed to future features like showing weather, top news stories, and upcoming calendar events when someone is near the TV, showing AI-generated news briefings, and the ability to respond to questions like “explain the solar system to a third-grader” with text, audio, and YouTube videos.
But when people have desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones in their homes already, how helpful are these features truly? Govil-Pai admitted to PCWorld that “people are not used to” using their TVs this way “so it will take some time for them to adapt to it.” With this in mind, it seems odd for TV companies to implement new, more powerful microphones to support features that Google acknowledges aren’t in demand. I’m not saying that tech companies shouldn’t get ahead of the curve and offer groundbreaking features that users hadn’t considered might benefit them. But already planning to monetize those capabilities—with a subscription, no less—suggests a prioritization of corporate needs.
Samsung is hungry for AI
People who want to use their TV for cooking inspiration often turn to cooking shows or online cooking videos. However, Samsung wants people to use its TV software to identify dishes they want to try making.
During CES, Samsung announced Samsung Food for TVs. The feature leverages Samsung TVs’ AI processors to identify food displayed on the screen and recommend relevant recipes. Samsung introduced the capability in 2023 as an iOS and Android app after buying the app Whisk in 2019. As noted by TechCrunch, though, other AI tools for providing recipes based on food images are flawed.
So why bother with such a feature? You can get a taste of Samsung’s motivation from its CES-announced deal with Instacart that lets people order off Instacart from Samsung smart fridges that support the capability. Samsung Food on TVs can show users the progress of food orders placed via the Samsung Food mobile app on their TVs. Samsung Food can also create a shopping list for recipe ingredients based on what it knows (using cameras and AI) is in your (supporting) Samsung fridge. The feature also requires a Samsung account, which allows the company to gather more information on users.
Other software-centric features loaded into Samsung TVs this year include a dedicated AI button on the new TVs’ remotes, the ability to use gestures to control the TV but only if you’re wearing a Samsung Galaxy Watch, and AI Karaoke, which lets people sing karaoke using their TVs by stripping vocals from music playing and using their phone as a mic.
Like LG, Samsung has shown growing interest in ads and data collection. In May, for example, it expanded its automatic content recognition tech to track ad exposure on streaming services viewed on its TVs. It also has an ads analytics partnership with Experian.
Large language models on TVs
TVs are mainstream technology in most US homes. Generative AI chatbots, on the other hand, are emerging technology that many people have yet to try. Despite these disparities, LG and Samsung are incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot into 2025 TVs.
LG claims that Copilot will help its TVs “understand conversational context and uncover subtle user intentions,” adding: “Access to Microsoft Copilot further streamlines the process, allowing users to efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues. For an even smoother and more engaging experience, the AI chatbot proactively identifies potential user challenges and offers timely, effective solutions.”
Similarly, Samsung, which is also adding Copilot to some of its smart monitors, said in its announcement that Copilot will help with “personalized content recommendations.” Samsung has also said that Copilot will help its TVs understand strings of commands, like increasing the volume and changing the channel, CNET noted. Samsung said it intends to work with additional AI partners, namely Google, but it’s unclear why it needs multiple AI partners, especially when it hasn’t yet seen how people use large language models on their TVs.
TV-as-a-platform
To be clear, this isn’t a condemnation against new, unexpected TV features. This also isn’t a censure against new TV apps or the usage of AI in TVs.
AI marketing hype is real and misleading regarding the demand, benefits, and possibilities of AI in consumer gadgets. However, there are some cases when innovative software, including AI, can improve things that TV users not only care about but actually want or need. For example, some TVs use AI for things like trying to optimize sound, color, and/or brightness, including based on current environmental conditions or upscaling. This week, Samsung announced AI Live Translate for TVs. The feature is supposed to be able to translate foreign language closed captions in real time, providing a way for people to watch more international content. It’s a feature I didn’t ask for but can see being useful and changing how I use my TV.
But a lot of this week’s TV announcements underscore an alarming TV-as-a-platform trend where TV sets are sold as a way to infiltrate people’s homes so that apps, AI, and ads can be pushed onto viewers. Even high-end TVs are moving in this direction and amplifying features with questionable usefulness, effectiveness, and privacy considerations. Again, I can’t help but wonder what better innovations could have come out this year if more R&D was directed toward hardware and other improvements that are more immediately rewarding for users than karaoke with AI.
The TV industry is facing economic challenges, and, understandably, TV brands are seeking creative solutions for making money. But for consumers, that means paying for features that you’re likely to ignore. Ultimately, many people just want a TV with amazing image and sound quality. Finding that without having to sift through a bunch of fluff is getting harder.
Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.
“I do fear that the pressure to make better TVs will be lost…”
If you’re looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there’s an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn’t appear to be what the industry is focused on.
Today’s TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking. In 2025, we expect competition in the TV industry to center around TV operating systems (OSes) and TVs’ ability to deliver more relevant advertisements to viewers.
That yields a complicated question for shoppers: Are you willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV?
Vizio is a Walmart brand now
One of the most impactful changes to the TV market next year will be Walmart owning Vizio. For Walmart, the deal, which closed on December 3 for approximately $2.3 billion, is about owning the data collection capabilities of Vizio’s SmartCast OS. For years, Vizio has been shifting its business from hardware sales to Platform+, “which consists largely of its advertising business” and “now accounts for all the company’s gross profit,” as Walmart noted when announcing the acquisition.
Walmart will use data collected from Vizio TVs to fuel its ad business, which sells ads on the OSes of its TVs (including Vizio and Onn brand TVs) and point-of-sale machines in Walmart stores. In a December 3 statement, Walmart confirmed its intentions with Vizio:
The acquisition… allows Walmart to serve its customers in new ways to enhance their shopping journeys. It will also bring to market new and differentiated ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery, helping brands achieve greater impact from their advertising investments with Walmart Connect—the company’s retail media business in the US.
In 2025, buying a Vizio TV won’t just mean buying a TV from a company that’s essentially an ad business. It will mean fueling Walmart’s ad business. With Walmart also owning Onn and Amazon owning Fire TVs, that means there’s one less TV brand that isn’t a cog in a retail giant’s ever-expanding ad machine. With a history that includes complaints around working conditions and questionable products, including some that are straight scams, some people (including numerous Ars commenters) try to avoid commerce giants like Walmart and Amazon. In 2025, that will be harder for people looking for a new TV, especially an inexpensive one.
“Roku is at grave risk”
Further, Walmart has expressed a goal of becoming one of the 10 biggest ad companies, with the ad business notably having higher margins than groceries. It could use Vizio, via more plentiful and/or intrusive ads, to fuel those goals.
And Walmart’s TV market share is set to grow in the new year. Paul Gray, research director of consumer electronics and devices at Omdia, told Ars Technica he expects that “the new combined sales (Vizio plus Walmart’s white label) will be bigger than the current market leader Samsung.”
There are also potential implications related to how Walmart decides to distribute TVs post-acquisition. As Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at Omdia, told Ars:
One of the possibilities is that Walmart could make use of the Vizio operating system a condition for placement in stores. This could change not only the Onn/Vizio TVs but may also include the Chinese brands. The [Korean] and Japanese brands may resist, as they have premium brand positioning, but the Chinese brands would be vulnerable. Roku is at grave risk.
Roku acquisition?
With Walmart set to challenge Roku, some analysts anticipate that Roku will be acquired in 2025. In December, Guggenheim analysts predicted that ad tech firm The Trade Desk, which is launching its own TV OS, will look to buy Roku to scale its OS business.
Needham & Company’s Laura Martin also thinks an acquisition—by The Trade Desk or possibly one of Walmart’s retail competitors—could be on the horizon.
‘’Walmart has told you by buying Vizio that these large retailers need a connected television advertising platform to tie purchases to,” Martin told Bloomberg. “That means Target and other large retailers have that reason to buy Roku to tie Roku’s connected television ad units to their sales in their retail stores. And by the way, Roku has much higher margins than any retailer.’”
She also pointed to Amazon as a potential buyer, noting that it might be able to use Roku’s user data to feed large language models.
Roku was already emboldened enough in 2024 to introduce home screen video ads to its TVs and streaming devices and has even explored technology for showing ads over anything plugged into a Roku set. Imagine how using Roku devices might further evolve if owned by a company like The Trade Desk or Amazon with deep interests in ads and tracking.
TV owners accustomed to being tracked
TV brands have become so dependent on ads that some are selling TVs at a loss to push ads. How did we get to the point where TV brands view their hardware as a way to track and sell to viewers? Part of the reason TV OSes are pushing the limits on ads is that many viewers seem willing to accept them, especially in the name of saving money.
Per the North American Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report, 64.3 percent of subscription video-on-demand users subscribe to an ad-supported tier (compared to 48 percent in Q2 2023). And users are showing more tolerance to ads, with 77.8 percent saying they are “tolerant” or “in favor of” ads, up from 74 percent in Q2 2023. This is compared to 22.2 percent of respondents saying they’re “averse” to ads. TiVo surveyed 4,490 people in the US and Canada ages 18 and up for the report.
“Based on streaming services, many consumers see advertising as a small price to pay for lower cash costs,” Horner said.
The analyst added:
While some consumers will be sensitive to privacy issues or intrusive advertising, at the same time, most people have shown themselves entirely comfortable with being tracked by (for example) social media.
Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at the TVREV TV and streaming analyst group, agreed that platforms like Instagram have proven people’s willingness to accept ads and tracking, particularly if it leads to them seeing more relevant advertisements or giving shows or movies better ratings. According to the analyst, customers seem to think, “Google is tracking my finances, my porn habits, my everything. Why do I care if NBC knows that I watch football and The Tonight Show?”
While Ars readers may be more guarded about Google having an insider look at their data, many web users have a more accepting attitude. This has opened the door for TVs to test users’ max tolerance for ads and tracking to deliver more relevant ads.
That said, there’s a fine line.
“Companies have to be careful of… finding that line between taking in advertising, especially display ads on the home screen or whatnot, and it becoming overwhelming [for viewers],” Wolk said.
One of the fastest-growing ad vehicles for TVs currently and into 2025 is free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels that come preloaded and make money from targeted ads. TCL is already experimenting with what viewers will accept here. It recently premiered movies made with generative AI that it hopes will fuel its FAST business while saving money. TCL believes that passive viewers will accept a lot of free content, even AI-generated movies and shows. But some viewers are extremely put off by such media, and there’s a risk of souring the reputation of some FAST services.
OS wars
We can expect more competition from TV OS operators in 2025, including from companies that traditionally have had no place in consumer hardware, like ad tech giant The Trade Desk. These firms face steep competition, though. Ultimately, the battle of TV OSes could end up driving improvements around usability, content recommendations, and, for better or worse, ad targeting.
Following heightened competition among TV OSes, Omdia’s Gray expects winners to start emerging, followed by consolidation.
“I expect that the final state will be a big winner, a couple of sizeable players, and some niche offerings,” he said.
Companies without backgrounds in consumer tech will have difficulty getting a foot into an already crowded market, which means we may not have to worry much about companies like The Trade Desk taking over our TVs.
“I have yet to meet a single person who hasn’t looked at me quizzically and said, ‘Wait, what are they thinking?’ Because the US market for the operating system is very tight,” Wolk said. “… So for American consumers, I don’t think we’ll see too many new entrants.”
You can also expect Comcast and Charter to push deeper into TV software as they deal with plummeting cable businesses. In November, they made a deal to put their joint venture’s TV OS, Xumo OS, in Hisense TVs that will be sold in Target. Xumo TVs are already available in almost 8,000 locations, Comcast and Charter said in November. The companies claimed that the retailers selling Xumo TVs “represent nearly 75 percent of all smart TV sales in the US.”
Meanwhile, Xperi Corp. said in November that it expected its TiVo OS to be in 2 million TVs by the end of 2024 and 7 million TVs by the end of 2025. At the heart of Tivo OS is TiVo One, which TiVo describes as a “cross-screen ad platform for new inventory combined with audience targeting and monetization” that is available in TVs and car displays. Announcing TiVo One in May, Xperi declared that the “advertising market is projected to reach [$36] billion” by 2026, meaning that “advertising on smart TVs has never been more imperative.”
But as competition intensifies and pushes the market into selecting a few “sizeable players,” as Gray put it, there’s more pressure for companies to make their OSes stand out to TV owners. This is due to advertising interests, but it also means more focus on making TVs easier to use and better able to help people find something to watch.
Not a lot of options
At the start of this article, we asked if you’d be willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV. But the truth is there aren’t many alternative options beyond disconnecting your TV from the Internet or paying for an Apple TV streaming device in addition to your TV. Indeed, amid a war among OSes, many Ars readers will opt not to leverage ad-filled software at all. This shows a disconnect between TV makers and a core audience while suggesting limits in terms of new TV experiences next year.
Still, analysts agree that even among more expensive TV brands, there has been a shift toward building out ad businesses and OSes over improving hardware features like audio.
“This is a low-margin business, and even in the premium segment, the revenues from ads and data are significant. Also, the sort of consumer who buys a premium TV is likely to be especially interesting to advertisers,” Gray said.
Some worry about what this means for TV innovation. With software being at the center of TV businesses, there seems to be less incentive to drive hardware-related advancements. Gray echoed this sentiment while acknowledging that the current state of TVs is at least driving down TV prices.
“I do fear that the pressure to make better TVs will be lost and that matters such as… durability and performance risk being de-prioritized,” he said.
Vendors are largely leaving shoppers to drive improvements themselves, such as by buying additional gadgets like soundbars, Wolk noted.
In 2025, TVs will continue focusing innovation around software, which has immediate returns via ad sales compared to new hardware, which can take years to develop and catch on with shoppers. For some, this is creating a strong demand for dumb TVs, but unfortunately, there are no immediate signs of that becoming a trend.
As Horner put it, “This is an advertising/e-commerce-driven market, not a consumer-driven market. TV content is just the bait in the trap.”
Scharon is Ars Technica’s Senior Product Reviewer writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer technology, including laptops, mechanical keyboards, and monitors. She’s based in Brooklyn.
Zipcar’s rep declined to specify how many people were affected by the outage.
A warning against total app reliance
Zipcar’s app problems have not only cost it money but also traumatized some users who may think twice before using Zipcar again. The convenience of using apps to control physical products only exists if said apps are functioning and prepared for high-volume time periods, such as Thanksgiving weekend.
Despite Zipcar’s claims of a “small percentage” of users being affected, the company’s customer support system seemed overwhelmed. Long wait times coupled with misinformation regarding things like fees make already perturbed customers feel more deserted.
Those are the pitfalls of completely relying on apps for basic functionality. There was a time when Zipcar members automatically received physical “Zipcards” for opening doors. Now, they’re not really advertised, and users have to request one.
Zipcars also used to include keys inside of locked cars more frequently. Reducing these physical aspects may have saved the company money but effectively put all of Zipcar’s eggs in one basket.
Nightmarish app problems like the one Zipcar experienced can be a deal-breaker. Just look at Sonos, whose botched app update is costing it millions. Further, turning something like car rentals into a virtually app-only service is a risky endeavor that can quickly overcomplicate simple tasks. Some New Zealand gas stations were out of luck earlier this year, for example, when a Leap Day glitch caused payment processing software to stop working. Gas stations that needed apps for payments weren’t able to make sales, and drivers were inconvenienced.
Apps can simplify and streamline while delivering ingenuity. But that doesn’t mean traditional, app-free measures should be eliminated as backups.
Per The Trade Desk, Ventura’s other top “benefits” will include a “cleaner supply chain for streaming TV advertising, minimizing supply chain hops and costs—ensuring maximum ROI for every advertising dollar and optimized yield for publishers” and improved ad targeting.
TVs sold at a loss in order to bolster ad businesses
The Trade Desk plans to sell Ventura to TV manufacturers and distributors, plus other types of companies, like airlines, hotel chains, and “gaming companies,” Axios reported.
The ad tech firm says it isn’t looking to make money off of the OS directly and doesn’t plan to make hardware.
Instead, Ventura is supposed to benefit The Trade Desk by helping its advertiser customers reach more people. Differing from how TV owners traditionally view TV software’s purpose, Ventura will prioritize the ability to show TV owners the most appealing type of ads. Green will consider Ventura a success “if it drives more pricing transparency and stronger measurement for the CTV advertising ecosystem writ large,” per Axios.
Ventura has reportedly garnered interest from Sonos already, CEO Patrick Spence told Axios. Sonos is rumored to be developing a streaming set-top box. The audio company’s serious and public consideration of something like Ventura hints at the type of business approach it may take with streaming hardware.
The Trade Desk’s interest in creating a TV OS centered on being helpful to advertisers indicates how important ads have become to TVs and/or TV software companies. Some, like Vizio and Roku, have embraced this shift so much that they’re selling TVs “at somewhere between -3 and -7 percent margin” in a scramble to attract users, Paul Gray, Omdia’s research director of consumer electronics and devices, said at a CTV industry conference earlier this month, per Broadband TV News. Then there’s Telly, a startup that has given TVs away for free so it can sell and track ads. (Telly TVs also have a secondary screen that can show ads when the TV is off.)
As companies continue to leverage TV software to sell ads and gather user data, TV owners will likely continue seeing fewer options for an ad-free TV viewing experience.
In February 2022, Samsung started promising up to four generations of Android OS and One UI upgrades to “select” Galaxy devices, as well as “up to five years of security updates.” And in January, it announced moving to seven years of security and OS updates, matching a move from Google. However, the Fold 2 wasn’t included in Samsung’s list of “select” Galaxy devices.
Thus, one could have estimated that the Fold 2 might stop receiving OS and security updates by 2024, four years after its debut. But it’s still hard to reconcile with paying four figures for a phone that became a security risk after four years, despite functioning properly otherwise. Apple, by comparison, now promises at least five years of security updates. Apple only started making that promise in 2023 with the iPhone 15 series. However, the current-generation iOS 18 is supported by iPhones released in 2020, like the second-generation iPhone SE, and even older ones, like the iPhone XR that came out in 2018. Arguably short-lived expensive devices like the Fold 2 are part of the reason some activists are pushing for the FTC to require that smart devices state on their packaging how long they’ll receive updates.
However, unlike iPhones, Samsung phones aren’t all powered by a proprietary chip, making promises of upgrades require commitments from third-party vendors, like Qualcomm. With Qualcomm known for being resistant to longer chip life cycles in the past, seven years of updates is progress for Samsung users—just not those who invested in the Z Fold 2.
Samsung issued a software update on October 2 that bricked some older Galaxy smartphones. While Samsung has stopped the update from rolling out further, those with broken phones have received a harsh reminder of the importance of data backups.
On Wednesday, numerous people online started complaining about their Samsung phones being stuck in a bootloop (you can see examples here, here, and in newer comments here).
A Samsung spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that an update to Samsung’s SmartThings Framework app for managing smart devices caused the problems:
We are aware that a limited number of Galaxy smartphones running on Android 12 are rebooting continuously during an update to the latest version of the SmartThings app.
Samsung “immediately suspended the update” after learning of the problem and is “working to resolve the issues,” the company’s spokesperson said. According to user reports online, Samsung has issued a new update that people can download without their phones breaking.
However, owners of older affected phones, namely the Galaxy S10 series, Galaxy Note 10 series, Galaxy M51, and Galaxy A90, have been unable to power their devices on to roll back the update. Many users who already manually or automatically installed the update are still dealing with bricked devices.
A harsh reminder
Users with bricked Galaxy phones were initially met with a difficult choice: Go without their phone or perform a data-erasing factory reset.
Samsung’s statement to Ars advised customers to “contact the Samsung Contact Center” for support, but it’s unclear if a fix can be employed that doesn’t wipe the phone.
Sonos’ controversial app update in May was “obviously a failure,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told Reuters today.
When the update launched in May, customers revolted over missing features, like the ability to search music libraries, edit song and playlist queues, and set sleep timers. In addition, some already purchased hardware, especially older models, began having problems.
In a note to investors on Tuesday, Sonos said that “more than 80 percent of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced.” The app should be “almost 100 percent restored in the coming weeks.” Sonos has been updating the app every two weeks in an effort to bring it to parity with the old one.
“This is obviously a failure of Sonos, but it starts with me in terms of where it started,” he said.
The CEO reportedly admitted to the botched rollout stemming from a lack of proper testing and a desire to push out a lot of features simultaneously:
We underestimated the complexity of the system, and so our testing didn’t capture all of the things that it should. We released it too soon.
Sonos was reportedly eager to get the app out to accommodate Ace, resulting in an overhaul of the app, its player side, and Sonos’ cloud infrastructure. Last month, purported former and current Sonos employees spoke about the app accumulating technical debt before being forced into an update that wasn’t ready and overlooked some workers’ concerns.
No executive bonuses for now
Reuters reported today that Spence and seven other execs “would forgo their bonus in the most recent fiscal year,” which ended on September 30. The publication noted that Spence got a bonus of approximately $72,000 for fiscal year 2023. Reuters reported that the company heads have “certain benchmarks” to meet to receive bonuses for the October 2024 to September 2025 fiscal year.
It’s not hard to understand why the executives aren’t getting their bonuses. In addition to the damage that the botched app redesign has wrought on Sonos’ reputation—aggravating long-time customers and deterring prospective ones—the app has had tangible financial consequences. The Santa Barbara, California company is expecting to pay up to $30 million in the short term to fix the app and try to restore customer and partner trust. The company also delayed two hardware releases, which led it to reduce its fiscal 2024 guidance. Sonos shares have fallen more than 30 percent since before the app update, Reuters noted.
Enlarge/ The small quantum processor (center) surrounded by cables that carry microwave signals to it, and the refrigeration hardware.
As we described earlier this year, operating a quantum computer will require a significant investment in classical computing resources, given the amount of measurements and control operations that need to be executed and interpreted. That means that operating a quantum computer will also require a software stack to control and interpret the flow of information from the quantum side.
But software also gets involved well before anything gets executed. While it’s possible to execute algorithms on quantum hardware by defining the full set of commands sent to the hardware, most users are going to want to focus on algorithm development, rather than the details of controlling any single piece of quantum hardware. “If everyone’s got to get down and know what the noise is, [use] performance management tools, they’ve got to know how to compile a quantum circuit through hardware, you’ve got to become an expert in too much to be able to do the algorithm discovery,” said IBM’s Jay Gambetta. So, part of the software stack that companies are developing to control their quantum hardware includes software that converts abstract representations of quantum algorithms into the series of commands needed to execute them.
IBM’s version of this software is called Qiskit (although it was made open source and has since been adopted by other companies). Recently, IBM made a couple of announcements regarding Qiskit, both benchmarking it in comparison to other software stacks and opening it up to third-party modules. We’ll take a look at what software stacks do before getting into the details of what’s new.
What’s the software stack do?
It’s tempting to view IBM’s Qiskit as the equivalent of a compiler. And at the most basic level, that’s a reasonable analogy, in that it takes algorithms defined by humans and converts them to things that can be executed by hardware. But there are significant differences in the details. A compiler for a classical computer produces code that the computer’s processor converts to internal instructions that are used to configure the processor hardware and execute operations.
Even when using what’s termed “machine language,” programmers don’t directly control the hardware; programmers have no control over where on the hardware things are executed (ie, which processor or execution unit within that processor), or even the order instructions are executed in.
Things are very different for quantum computers, at least at present. For starters, everything that happens on the processor is controlled by external hardware, which typically act by generating a series of laser or microwave pulses. So, software like IBM’s Qiskit or Microsoft’s Q# act by converting the code they’re given into commands that are sent to hardware that’s external to the processor.
These “compilers” must also keep track of exactly which part of the processor things are happening on. Quantum computers act by performing specific operations (called gates) on individual or pairs of qubits; to do that, you have to know exactly which qubit you’re addressing. And, for things like superconducting qubits, where there can be device-to-device variations, which hardware qubits you end up using can have a significant effect on the outcome of the calculations.
As a result, most things like Qiskit provide the option of directly addressing the hardware. If a programmer chooses not to, however, the software can transform generic instructions into a precise series of actions that will execute whatever algorithm has been encoded. That involves the software stack making choices about which physical qubits to use, what gates and measurements to execute, and what order to execute them in.
The role of the software stack, however, is likely to expand considerably over the next few years. A number of companies are experimenting with hardware qubit designs that can flag when one type of common error occurs, and there has been progress with developing logical qubits that enable error correction. Ultimately, any company providing access to quantum computers will want to modify its software stack so that these features are enabled without requiring effort on the part of the people designing the algorithms.
In May, Sonos updated its mobile app—to the dismay of many users. With missing features and bugs, customers complained about a loss of functionality and hardware not working the way it should. As Sonos deals with the expensive repercussions, a report from Bloomberg today highlights how Sonos allowed the release of an update so buggy and incomplete as to overturn its goodwill with long-standing customers.
Illustrating how poorly this app update has gone, last month,Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said the company would spend $20 million to $30 million in the short term to get the app where it needs to be (which is, basically, functioning as well as the predecessor) and rebuild customer and partner trust. Sonos also expects to miss its annual revenue target by $200 million. This is partially due to its delay of two hardware releases to focus on the app. Bloomberg noted that “Sonos shares are down 25% this year.” Annual bonuses and merit-based raises have also reportedly been canceled.
Outdated code
One reason for the app’s failure is the outdated code and infrastructure that the prior app was running on. Anonymous employees Bloomberg spoke with claimed that the Sonos app’s technical debt had been building up for 20 years before the update.
By the time Sonos decided to update the app in mid-2022, it was dealing with software based on virtually obsolete infrastructure and code languages. As such, the app update “was less about introducing new functionality than sorting out the existing mess,” Bloomberg reported.
After decades of the app’s inner workings growing stale, the impending release of Sonos’ long anticipated Ace wireless headphones, which came out in June, made the need for a new app both urgent and necessary. This is because the headphones were made to be on-the-go, differing from Sonos’ other products, mainly speakers and soundbars relying on home Wi-Fi. This seems to align with comments that Spence made to investors in August. He said that the app update was “a redesign of the entire system—not only the app but also the player side of our system, as well as our cloud infrastructure—and this was a complex undertaking.”
In May, Bloomberg reported that Sonos aimed to release the new app “at least a few weeks” before Ace. At the time, Bloomberg said that the update was originally supposed to release in March but was delayed due to “software-engineering challenges.”
Although it makes sense that Sonos’ most mobile offering yet would need a more advanced, revamped app, it seems that the app’s redesign could have been initiated earlier than the mid-2022 timeframe that Bloomberg reported. In addition to the years of technical debt that has been said to be built up, Sonos’ headphones have been reported to be in development since at least 2019.
Hundreds of owners of smart TVs and streaming devices from United Kingdom telecom Sky reported that their hardware stopped powering on Thursday. Sky hasn’t confirmed the cause of the problem, but a botched update is largely suspected.
Sky, a Comcast company that sells Internet, mobile, and satellite TV service in the UK, got into the streaming hardware business in 2021. Its proprietary Glass TVs and Stream pucks let people access TV channels offered through Sky via the Internet instead of a dish. As of this writing, Glass TVs range from 600 pounds (about $800) for a 43-inch set to 1,199 pounds (about $1,600) for 65 inches and include quantum dots and Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG HDR support. To order a Glass TV, people have to sign up for a Sky Entertainment subscription that includes the same type of channels offered through Sky’s satellite TV services but via streaming, plus Netflix (with or without ads). If you don’t buy/renew your Sky Entertainment subscription, “access to TV apps like Netflix won’t be available,” Sky says. The Stream puck, meanwhile, supports various streaming apps but doesn’t work without a Sky subscription.
As of yesterday, paying subscribers and owners of Glass and Stream devices reported that their devices were unable to power on. Users reported only being able to see a blank screen, with some saying the problems lasted for hours.
As noted by the BBC, problems started on Thursday night. Per Downdetector, the situation seemed to peak at around 3: 10 pm UTC with 377 incidents reported, but the overall number of affected devices could vary. A thread on Sky’s community forum about the problem is currently 141 pages long.
This morning, some people were still complaining about broken devices online; although, some reported that their devices were functioning again. As of this writing, DownDetector is showing 142 reported incidents.
With no TV to watch, Glass and Stream users had plenty of time to go online to try to troubleshoot with each other and share their disappointment in Sky. Some have called for Sky to pay for the cost of a new TV, while others are wondering if they will get financial compensation for their troubles. Sky hasn’t made any public mention of refunds or credits, though.
A user going by larky+marky on Sky’s community forum wrote:
What a total lump of st.
I have been thinking of cancelling my subscription altogether, so now this has made my mind up.
Yesterday, a Twitter user claimed that their TV was bricked “for the best part of 11 hours.” The user, going by MattHudson81, wrote, “We pay a lot of money each month for the use of your services and understand at times faults happen, but 11 hours so far with no end in sight, it’s not good.”
On Sky’s support forum, an employee said that Sky was working on the problem throughout Thursday night. “We continue to work on the problem in the background,” the employee going by KevNewMedia wrote today.
Sky also acknowledged the problems on Thursday via its Twitter account, saying:
Some Sky Glass/Stream customers are currently experiencing technical issues when trying to switch on their devices. Our technical teams are working hard to fix this. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.
Today, the Twitter account posted another apology along with a link to a support page with steps for getting the hardware to work (basically by resetting it). However, at least some people on Sky’s support forum have said that the fix hasn’t worked for them.
“Yet this isn’t working for everyone though. You’re essentially just tell[ing] people to turn it on and off again,” PaulRC1963 wrote. “Sky is acting very incompetent.”
Sky hasn’t confirmed the cause
Sky declined to answer questions from the BBC about the cause of the problems or when they’d be totally resolved. Without further explanation, a poorly executed software update issued via the Internet seems to be the most obvious reason for hundreds of people concurrently reporting broken devices.
The situation, which led to missed sporting events and hours of boredom, is a reminder of the risks of buying hardware from companies, like ISPs, that aren’t traditionally in the technology game. Sky first unveiled its Glass TVs in 2021, ostensibly as an attempt to save its business amid a massive shift to streaming over satellite dishes and cable and to drive subscription revenue. It’s possible that in its haste to jump on the streaming bandwagon, it has overlooked some of the intricacies and complexities in mass, web-issued updates. Notably, Sky’s set-top boxes have reportedly been unaffected.
If a botched update didn’t break the smart TVs and streaming sticks, it would be prudent of Sky to inform customers of the root of the problem. Otherwise, it can be hard for customers to have confidence that the problems won’t repeat and that their subscriptions and Sky hardware are worthwhile.
