Normally around this time of year, companies are more than happy to goose their year-end sales by announcing special deals and lower prices. Sonos is taking the opposite strategy, warning customers that come January 9, 2020, it will raise prices on the Sonos Amp and Sonos Port by $50.
For most consumers, these price increases won’t be too inconvenient. Both the $599 Sonos Amp ($649 in 2020) and the $399 Port ($449 in 2020), target the custom installation market, which arguably has a much higher tolerance for an 8-12% bump in the cost of products.
Nonetheless, these products are unique in the Sonos product lineup in that they are the only way to add your own non-amplified speakers to a Sonos system (via the Amp) or bring an existing home theater system into the Sonos fold (via the Port). It’s also worth noting that in some ways, this is actually the second price increase for these products. The first round came when Sonos rolled them out. As updated replacements for the previous Sonos Connect:Amp and Sonos Connect, the Amp and Port arrived with considerably higher price tags than their predecessors (albeit with some added features too).
Sonos tells Digital Trends the price increases are the result of new investments the company is making in its overseas production facilities. “Sonos has been on a journey to diversify its supply chain and expand production into new countries in a manner that is sustainable and supports long term growth,” a company representative told us via email. “Supporting this effort and investment has resulted in [the] upcoming changes in pricing.”
That production expansion will happen in Malaysia. Curiously, Sonos is only increasing the price of these two products in the U.S. All other Sonos markets, including Canada, will be unaffected by the change.
2019 has been a big year for Sonos. It launched its first two collaborative products with Ikea: The Symfonisk Bookshelf Speaker and the Symfonisk Table Lamp. It replaced its hugely popular Play:1 speaker with the Sonos One SL (an AirPlay 2-capable unit that physically matches the Sonos One but without smart speaker skills), it replaced the Sonos Connect with the Sonos Port, and most recently, it released its first-ever Bluetooth-capable speaker, the $399 Sonos Move.
