As Apple gears up for AR headset, Snap writes off $39.9M in unsold Spectacles
Snap this week dramatically missed Wall Street estimates, reporting a net loss of $443.2 million -- with a big write-off of $39.9 million in Snap Spectacles about a year after release. Should Apple jump in to the headset market as rumored, Snap's own wearable ambitions may only get worse.
In its quarterly earnings statement, Snap said that it had misinterpreted "strong early demand" for the wearables, and ordered far more Spectacles than it needed. Aggravating the problem, more consumers returned the product than predicted.
Out of the $207.9 million in revenue the company reported, a "substantial amount" of the $5.4 million in "other" revenue category came from the spectacles.
As a result of the earnings fumble, the company will be completely redesigning the Snapchat app, and warned of a "strong likelihood" that the process will disrupt the business in the short term.
"We don't yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application," Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said. "We're willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business."
A pair of Spectacles cost $129.99 at release, and is still bundled with a charging case and cable. Black, coral, and teal colors of the Specs are available. In February, expenses for the Spectacles were greater than earnings -- a trend that continues to present.
Snap's first hardware is superficially similar to Google Glass, but designed only to shoot between 10 and 30 seconds of first-person video, mostly for use with Snapchat. The video is also recorded in a unique circular format, meaning that people watching a clip in Snapchat get a seamless view regardless of which way they're holding their phone.
Apple is said to be hard at work on a full-fledged augmented reality headset for launch as soon as 2020, running a new operating system dubbed "rOS" and codenamed "T288." While likely intended for augmented reality, any rumored headset will be able to snap pictures or take videos of what the wearer is looking at.
Additionally, a rumor started on Facebook claiming that the service would be shutting down because of "copyright and legal issues" -- which has since been addressed on the company's @Snap and @Snapchat Twitter accounts.
In its quarterly earnings statement, Snap said that it had misinterpreted "strong early demand" for the wearables, and ordered far more Spectacles than it needed. Aggravating the problem, more consumers returned the product than predicted.
Out of the $207.9 million in revenue the company reported, a "substantial amount" of the $5.4 million in "other" revenue category came from the spectacles.
As a result of the earnings fumble, the company will be completely redesigning the Snapchat app, and warned of a "strong likelihood" that the process will disrupt the business in the short term.
"We don't yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application," Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said. "We're willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business."
A pair of Spectacles cost $129.99 at release, and is still bundled with a charging case and cable. Black, coral, and teal colors of the Specs are available. In February, expenses for the Spectacles were greater than earnings -- a trend that continues to present.
Snap's first hardware is superficially similar to Google Glass, but designed only to shoot between 10 and 30 seconds of first-person video, mostly for use with Snapchat. The video is also recorded in a unique circular format, meaning that people watching a clip in Snapchat get a seamless view regardless of which way they're holding their phone.
Apple is said to be hard at work on a full-fledged augmented reality headset for launch as soon as 2020, running a new operating system dubbed "rOS" and codenamed "T288." While likely intended for augmented reality, any rumored headset will be able to snap pictures or take videos of what the wearer is looking at.
Additionally, a rumor started on Facebook claiming that the service would be shutting down because of "copyright and legal issues" -- which has since been addressed on the company's @Snap and @Snapchat Twitter accounts.
For everyone wondering @Snap is not shutting down. It's a prank pic.twitter.com/JFBotaazvh
-- dani (@daniellemerkin)
Comments
Which Apple is hopefully working on . . .
The next time some tech troll starts castigating Apple for being “years” behind on some feature, some screen technology, think about it before buying into the criticism. Maybe Apple is just sitting back and watching. The Oculus Rift CEO made a point of saying they wouldn’t support macOS until the hardware was up to snuff. And how many times has Oculus been in the news lately?
Apparently these days everybody wants to monetize every app trying to be the next Facebook or whatever.
Back when the glasses were first out they followed a plan to limit availability with pop up sales instead of releasing it to the broad market. Apparently that strategy did not scale very well. They missed a window to scale and then came the knock offs.
since Facebook ripped the, off they have been slowly circling the bowl on their way down the sewer pipe. My guess is that we will read they have filed for bankruptcy unless someone buys them out for Intellectual Property- if they have any locked down at the USPTO.
Im not really into VR goggles, but I can say with very high certainty that I’d be giving Apple VR product a try if and when it’s available.
Probably one of those google x engineers who get bonus checks for failing at making a product like google glasses, they probably figure with the google glass failure under their belt they would be successful yet again. This is a typical example of if you do not study history you destine to repeat it. There is plenty of Tech failures these people are not looking and understanding why they failed.
Snap & Google failed for the same reason this failed
and why this fail
But instead:
https://storage.googleapis.com/spectacles/f9fe5b8e-df6b-4855-8281-9aa879b36efd/home/gallery/roller-coaster.mp4
https://www.spectacles.com