Sonos recently announced that it will stop providing software and firmware updates for some older devices. In a blog post, the company explained that with the evolution of technology and streaming services, "some older products have reached their technical limits in terms of memory and processing power."

Update (January 23): in response to customer complaints, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence issued a statement saying that Sonos will "continue to update bug fixes and security patches whenever possible."

What the following means for your Sonos speaker, soundbar, or audio device.

The following Sonos devices will no longer receive features:

Sonos will stop providing feature updates to these products after May 2020.

However, in his post, Spence wrote: "Legacy Sonos products will not receive new software features, but we promise to continue to update them with bug fixes and security patches whenever possible. If something occurs that cannot be addressed in a core part of the experience, we will try to provide an alternative solution and keep you informed of any changes that appear in the experience."

Sonos warns that services used by these devices, such as Spotify, Pandora, and other streaming services, may lose functionality if they update some of their technologies that are not backward compatible. Presumably, this will cease to be the case once Sonos is able to provide bug fixes for all of its products.

Owners of affected Sonos products can continue to use them as usual, knowing that they may lose functionality over time.

Alternatively, they can take advantage of Sonos' trade-up program, which provides a 30% credit for each Sonos device that is replaced.

If you want to keep your old Sonos device and put it in the same group as your new Sonos speaker, you will need to take steps to isolate it; according to The Verge, Sonos introduced a method in May to isolate older products so that newer Sonos group of owners devices to continue receiving updates as usual.

While it is unfortunate that Sonos is ending support for some legacy devices, it appears that those products will not be immediately unavailable as of May 1.