"In the last year, we have definitely focused on increasing our velocity of product development and product releases," Millington said. "I'm really proud of having launched the Playbase , the Sonos One and now the Beam in a relatively short period of time." That's a deliberate difference than the past, which typically saw years go by between hardware releases, and Millington said that keeping up that pace was going to be a key goal going forward as a public company. Accelerating product development could be a detriment to the quality the company is known for, but the three latest speakers have all met expectations for what Sonos can produce.

Perhaps the biggest change for Sonos in its newest products is the reliance on Alexa for voice commands -- but that's also a potential problem, as well. As the company noted in its IPO, Amazon can shut off access to Alexa with little warning, which would completely change the capabilities of many speakers the company has already sold. However, Millington says that Sonos has earned the engineering respect of Amazon, as well as Google and Apple throughout its partnerships with the three companies. (Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said yesterday that the long-awaited Google Assistant integration will arrive by the end of the year.)

The partnership that came out of developing Alexa to work with Sonos is part of why the company thinks its position with Amazon is secure. It's also why the company isn't overly concerned about the fact that it now counts Amazon, Google and Apple as rivals in the hardware market as well as partners. The fact that Sonos works as a relatively open platform that's now in use in 7 million homes is another point that Millington sees in the company's favor. "Sonos has earned over the years a reputation for quality of the experience, and that's what these companies want to associate their brands with," he said. "Something that works, that people like, that they talk about, that they tweet about... by delivering that great experience, these companies are incentivized to work with us."