It's never a great thing when a storied tech brand disappears, but I have to admit that Sonova's recent announcement about its plans for Sennheiser, which it bought a few years ago, is one of the more confusing bits of corporate planning I've encountered in my time writing about tech.
That's not purely because the strategy at play is baffling (although it is), but also because the announcement itself was buried in so much corporate waffle and forced optimism that you could almost forgive yourself for being unsure what's actually happening to Sennheiser. Sonova says the brand is being "discontinued", though, and there's no real way around that.
It sounds like someone could probably buy Sennheiser to save it from total oblivion, but if a price isn't met, then Sonova is seemingly happy to write it off and narrow its focus back down to medical applications, as it was known for when it bought the audio brand in the first place.
A hearing aid giant buying a headphone-maker was always a weird fit, but at the time of the purchase, Sonova said the synergies were obvious (since they all work with audio drivers). Now, it looks more like an ill-advised play for diversification, and it clearly hasn't worked at a time when the market for consumer headphones is as competitive as it's ever been.
Still, whatever happens next, all we know right now is that Sennheiser is under major threat, and that's something to decry. It's made some of my favourite headphones and earbuds of all time, and is rightly renowned for how neutral and precise its audio kit can be.
The Momentum 4 Wireless was one of my favourite over-ear headphones ever, in fact, a really clean piece of design that I used for a couple of years as my daily driver, which is always proof of a genuinely impressive device.
It's also not even like Sennheiser has drifted into irrelevance recently. I've heard tremendous things about one of its most recent launches, the HDB 630, which earned rave reviews around the industry and an impressive four-star verdict here at T3. Their wireless dongle genuinely innovated, too, making it all the more disappointing that they could be the last headphones Sennheiser ever makes.
Of course, I'm not an executive or a money man, and it's pretty clear that carving out a bigger slice of market share was something Sennheiser has struggled with in recent years, but that doesn't mean the brand deserves to be shuttered. Frankly, there are a fair few older consumers in the market who'd probably put Sennheiser up there with Bose in terms of historic trustworthiness, and that's not nothing.
If the right buyer comes along, maybe we'll look back at this point in time as the start of Sennheiser's phoenix phase. Right now, though, the signs are dismal, and if we have indeed seen the last of its consumer releases then I'll mourn Sennheiser as one of the greats, gone too soon.
