Unless Gibson ditches their other pro audio lines (KRK, Cerwin Vega, Neat microphones) ... I don't see how they can say they want to 'focus on consumer electronics' more than pro audio....and....is there really much overhead to software??....*puzzled*
 I don't understand...it has GOT to have at least as many users as Cubase et al, across all versions,  right? Otoh, it bounced from owner to owner in recent years so something must've been amiss....

THIS
 
might shed some light on it.

They mean they want to focus on hifis, radios, batteries etc. associated with the purchase of the Consumer Electronics division of Philips they made in 2014.
 
http://www.gibsoninnovations.com/en/our-brands/philips
 
Unfortunately, having publicly committed to a monthly continuous delivery model makes it impossible to move from a development mode to just maintenance mode without everybody noticing.

Another factor could be that a fair percentage of those many users may well be quite happily running older versions, from which there is zero revenue.

I don't think Sonar is/was as popular as we would like to believe.  As I talked to others in recording I was the only one using Sonar.  
 
The Gibson acquisition as it appears didn't do it any favors.  Face it, a company doesn't dump something if its profitable and maybe even marginally profitable.  Finally, Gibson appears to want to get on the consumer electronics bandwagon and I would be surprised if other brands they have go the way of Sonar or get sold off.

Gibson must pay debts $500 Mill. until summer 2018.
It is possible that Gibson is next year insolvent and the name and company of Gibson is selled.
So Gibson must concentrate on there core bussiness.

 
 Q: As popular as SONAR is, how was it not financially sound for Gibson?
 
A: Costs greater than turnover, therefore loss incurred.
 
Next question

fireberd
I don't think Sonar is/was as popular as we would like to believe.  
 

It probably is roughly the same as Cubase et al....

jamesg1213
THIS
 
might shed some light on it.

That was interesting!


 

fireberd
I don't think Sonar is/was as popular as we would like to believe.  As I talked to others in recording I was the only one using Sonar.  
 
The Gibson acquisition as it appears didn't do it any favors.  Face it, a company doesn't dump something if its profitable and maybe even marginally profitable.  Finally, Gibson appears to want to get on the consumer electronics bandwagon and I would be surprised if other brands they have go the way of Sonar or get sold off.

That's exactly my experience, most if not all of the Professional studios never used Sonar, though they tried it and their iterations and felt it wasn't up to Pro-Level with so many "Bugs & Crashes?" I felt like I was the only one to believe in it? Even though Sonar "Crashed many times" I stayed with it. Since moving to S1 with heavy recording schedule "Rock Solid" and became 2nd nature surprisingly fast, "Very Nice DAW". 

We had a lot of sound engineers in our studio that laughed about SONAR.
But as they saw what we do, they were absolute surprised. They all said, that there ProTools or Logic cann't do that.
They all remembered very early versions from SONAR about he year 2000 and never had a look on this software.