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Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2
- empath75 9y agoLiterally, the only people I saw talking about those stupid glasses were people trying to shill the IPO online.
- myusernameisok 9y agoI wasn't even aware they existed until I saw this thread. I don't understand why companies feel they need to start selling average household products, but with cameras, microphones, wifi, and bluetooth. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I don't even like my laptop having a camera.
- drzaiusapelord 9y agoI'm very surprised how feminine this design is. It has strong overtures towards 50's cat-eye frames and looks exclusively marketed to women. I just ran through all the media/PR stuff I could find for this and can't find any official photos of a man wearing them. I wonder if they would have better luck also selling a male-fashion oriented model. This isn't a hypothetical as I would probably pick these up for ease of vacation photos/videos, especially for those of us with active children who are difficult to photograph well. I'd much rather wear these on a boat than try to take a video or photo with my $700 smartphone begging to end up on the bottom of the Atlantic. Most of the reviews on amazon are from men and most of those complain about the style or being too small, so clearly men were very motivated to buy this product. I think there's a fundamental marketing mistake here with wearable cameras. Its not really going to appeal to sexy instagram addicts who can't selfie with them, but to busy parents and older people, especially those with limited mobility or inability to quickly pull out a smartphone. I think its obvious that those kinds of markets don't bring in SV money, so here we are pretending women actually want to buy and wear these ridiculous looking things all day. Sorry, but the huge graphics around the lens mar an otherwise tasteful design. Clearly the market chose against this concept. I'm also skeptical an always facing camera, be it on glasses, wearable watch/pedant, etc will ever be socially acceptable. Apparently, the Google Glasses problem hasn't been solved yet and may not ever be solved in the consumer space. >Snaps from Spectacles do not directly go to your phone. You can save Snaps taken with Spectacles to your phone by exporting them from Snapchat Memories to your Camera roll Also the implementation sounds wonky. I'm guessing this is a iOS limitation? On Android you should be able to write directly to the camera folder.
- softwarefounder 9y agoYou seem to be getting down-voted, maybe by the feminine comment, but you're right; it's clear that their marketing is towards women (https://www.spectacles.com/ https://www.spectacles.com/), and they're missing a huge market. (Why not two styles?) Edit: Imagine if they would've had a male styled version, and tried to get Kanye West, or some other pop/style star wearing them. Huge miss.
- ghostly_s 9y agoImagine it they would've done a female styled version, and got Kim Kardashian wearing them? Why is that less legitimate? The parent is being downvoted because of the implicit criticism is that a female-first targeted rollout is a mistake.
- coltonv 9y agoI think the parent would have drawn the same criticism if the exclusively marketed towards men. I think his point was simply that their marketing misses 50% of the market. His point is not that it's wrong to only market towards women, his point was that it seems weird from a revenue perspective to only market to to half the population.
- caseydurfee 9y agoA lot of products start with half the population, though, and it's not considered weird. The old euphemism is "shrink it and pink it" - originally design for men, then put out a women's version. If Spectacles take off, they can always "grow it and bro it" later. Starting off with a focused target market seems like a reasonable approach to me.
- noitsnot 9y agoThe demographics of revenue or ad generating snap users might be more telling, but he/she is suggesting that they should have released a male and female version or a gender neutral version. That way you're not missing a massive part of the market, a.k.a. 82 million daily active users if it's an even 50/50 male/female split.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pavlov 9y agoBased on my brief exposure, Spectacles is a very polished product. Everything about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from tech: the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine that displays a rendering of the glasses on your face; the yellow carrying case that doubles as extra battery for the glasses; the effortless installation experience; even the round video that invites peeking to discover hidden content at the edges. I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.
- swiftting 9y agoYes polished however what are the TRUE use cases for them ? What problem are they solving for the average consumer to gain wide adoption?
- nrhk 9y agoFrictionless sharing of your life with the people who matter to you. We've continuously reduced the friction it takes to share experiences with one another, spectacles is another step in that direction.
- coldtea 9y ago>Frictionless sharing of your life with the people who matter to you. We have the opposite problem. How to add friction to that sharing...
- nrhk 9y agoI think anyone who's not growing up in the world of frictionless sharing is gonna have a problem with that. Spectacle and Google Glass's issue of having a camera on your face won't weird in another decade. When this generation's teenagers are living out their 20s. Older people will find hyper-reality frightening though we'll get use to it, just never participate to the degree younger generations will.
- mrfusion 9y agoCan you use these without uploading to Snapchat? I wouldn't mind getting one just for making videos. (Or is there a better glasses product for that?)
- relyks 9y agoEven if Snap closes you in to use the Snapchat app with the glasses, you don't have to upload the snaps anywhere. You can just save it to your phone like an ordinary camera app.
- nerfhammer 9y agoYes, you can get the video files and don't need to upload them to snapchat.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Fricken 9y agoViewing the videos on Snapchat you rotate your phone depending on whether you want a horizontal or vertical frame, which is actually pretty cool. When saved outside of Snap the videos save to some standard video format as a circle within a rectangular frame, which makes them kinda useless.
- ardacinar 9y agoI think it was possible, but I'm not sure how usable that is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsJIrzRVTrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsJIrzRVTrw
- enzanki_ars 9y agoI saw your comment and the parent comment and didn't think I would see that video posted. That was the first video I thought of to answer the question. In case the parent poster is wondering, here is what the exported video looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVIaQq5Es5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVIaQq5Es5o
- relyks 9y agoThey may need to have better marketing, like have an ad that mentions it in the app. I didn't know that Spectacles are selling on Amazon now and I don't believe many people know either. I think most assume that they're still being sold at those exclusive kiosks.
- dmix 9y agoI also went to the website https://www.spectacles.com https://www.spectacles.com and I had no idea what they were until I googled other news articles about it. - Extremely vague besides "push a button to record video". - No mention of battery power, length of charge, app integration, quality of video, etc, etc. - It seems to be only targeted at women? There's no pictures of men wearing them. - What do the sides of the glasses look like? All pictures are the front angle. Does it look bulkier because it has a camera? - I see a prominent "Find a Snapbot" button, I had no idea "Snapbot" meant pop-up store until I read about it in a news article. I could go on... The pictures are visually appealing but having zero sales copy was a terrible idea. How can you sell something without explaining it? I too would have liked to see an Amazon link, I prefer using that over a custom online shop every time. And Amazon forces them to write an actual description about what the product does.
- ben174 9y agoI think the mysteriousness is part of the marketing. Makes them seem more obscure and thus desirable to some.
- JavaOffScript 9y agoThat's part of snapchat's brand, they make all their shit unintuitive, obscure, hard to discover and use. It's supposed to make it so that you feel hip and in the know when you finally discover how to make that mustache appear on your face or make text float in the background of your video. But of course that doesn't seem to transfer that well to selling hardware.
- 9y ago
- overcast 9y agoI don't understand the target audience. The reason smartphones are so popular, is because they do basically EVERYTHING for the common person. They aren't going to carry around another silly device to take pics, that was called a camera, and we see how popular those are now. For anyone that is serious, they are already carrying separates.
- azinman2 9y agoBut we don’t always have a camera on our heads, particularly not from our POV. Imagine you’re doing something actively - you probably don’t have hands available. It’s a diff product / use case, albeit not as generalizable.
- relyks 9y agoIsn't it easier to get a POV shot by using glasses though? It definitely makes easier and quicker to get shots that you wouldn't normally be able to get. E.g. you see someone doing some cool bike trick on the street. If you take out your phone in an attempt to capture the moment, you might miss it, while if you're using the Spectacles, you might not.
- overcast 9y agoI get it, but for what? I mean, it's such a niche thing. I have to wear these ugly glasses that do ONE thing. Or just use my phone. People have their phones out CONSTANTLY. They spend more time in hands than they do pockets.
- nrhk 9y agoYea but we're moving towards a world where our phones will stay in our pockets and we'll interact with it through glasses, watches, wearables, contacts, real world surfaces. If you think we're always connected now, wait for hypereality to start taking hold.
- ghostly_s 9y ago> People have their phones out CONSTANTLY. They spend more time in hands than they do pockets. Um. Not mine. Maybe stop wildly generalizing and your market analysis will improve.
- Splendor 9y ago42K is low but the product appeals to a very small segment of consumers: Snapchat users, who don't wear prescription eyeglasses, who happen to have a face shape complimented by the single size/style of Spectacles.
- mathperson 9y agoIt seems to me an error they don't offer a prescription version yet
- hkmurakami 9y agoSelling prescription eye wear in the United States seems to come with a lot of red tape. I don't think they want to get in the business of requesting and verifying an eye exam within the last 12 months before selling a one size fits all consumer item.
- rtkwe 9y agoDo you really have to to just provide frames though? Couldn't they just sell empty frames and have optometrists install and request lenses. I think that's how most frames work now.
- ValentineC 9y agoThere's at least one online optician [1] that offers prescription lenses for Snap's spectacles. I can't imagine the spectacles not being usable over normal eyeglasses either, just like other off-the-shelf sunglasses or 3D glasses. [1] e.g. https://www.glassesusa.com/snap-spectacles https://www.glassesusa.com/snap-spectacles
- otalp 9y agoAlso they were very hard to get if you weren't in the few places where they were sold.
- 9y ago
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI think this wearable from Snap had multiple objectives. 1. Allow more people to be tied in directly to snapchat and make users more loyal and provide a better experience. 2. Create a new revenue stream based on wearables. 3. A PR vehicle to drive more users into the platform. I think it accomplished #3. It may be able to accomplish 1-2 but we should wait and see. Also, something like Spectacles probably need a price drop to drive more people to buy it and the fact that this wearable doesn't drive people to upgrade to new spectacles would be an issue also.
- tenpies 9y ago4. Allow the IPO underwriters to pretend that the company is not a single app company but a lifestyle brand.
- OzzyB 9y agoSpectacles was nothing more than a smart PR campaign that promised a steady drip of positive press leading into their IPO. It was gimmicky, with no real-world use case, and "sold" as some kinda of geffen good that was only available in limited quantities.
- gre 9y agoI wonder how much revenue their geofenced custom filters bring in?
- ghostly_s 9y agoWhat's the revenue model on these?
- gre 9y agoYou can make custom filter for a location for a time and the price scales for both. You can only use the filter from that geofence. Something like $70 for a half square mile for a day on the geofence I drew in Santa Monica. It's $5 for an office building in downtown Austin for a day. Their ui is really fun!
- ransom1538 9y agoBirth control you can wear on your face.
- adamnemecek 9y agoI'm not surprised. Selling a hw product is hard.
- keepper 9y agoYou mean people don't want to wear douchetacles? Color me surprised! And before you downvote me, realize that basically, this is a gimmicky product, even if you think it is cool. While you are allowed to film anyone in public, the act of having an "always pointing highly visible camera", will elicit more negative reactions than positive ones... So unless snap is pretty tone deaf, this was known to be a non long term product, more of a product to appease their top producer base.
- leereeves 9y agoTo clarify the headline, TechCrunch is estimating Snap sold less than 105k Spectacles total, 64K in Q1 and 41K in Q2. > Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. That’s compared to $8.3 million in Other revenue in Q1, or fewer than 64,000 pairs
- erdle 9y agoEveryone has to estimate bc Evan didn't discuss it specifically on the call... he could have... but did not...
- wcummings 9y agoThey're not even available where I live, can't say I'm surprised.
- rtkwe 9y agoYou can just order them via Amazon now. I think the initial exclusivity worked ok to build a bit of excitement and hype around what probably would have been a lackluster launch if they'd just dropped them onto Amazon. Though even with that all the people I've seen using them were mocking them half the time for being ridiculous.
- digitalneal 9y agoLegit forgot they were still for sale. After all the hype and lack of product availability it simply skipped my mind that they were now readily available to the masses!
- jaredandrews 9y agoI personally wouldn't wear Spectacles, but I did expect them to do much better than they have. It seems like people don't feel silly wearing GoPros or carrying selfie sticks so they looked like a logical next step to me. Some anecdata: I have been traveling the U.S. for the last year, stopping in mostly major cities, and lived in Boston prior to that. In all that time I didn't see a single pair of Spectacles until last month... in Houston, TX of all places!
- Raphmedia 9y agoNo surprise there. There is no appeal to wearing your smartphone's camera on your face on a generic pair of glasses. People spent hours carefully choosing their glasses. You won't be able to get everyone to buy the same design.
- pier25 9y agoEven if the execution was flawless why would anyone think this was a good idea in the first place?
- ddmax 9y agoAll of those spectacles, eventually, will go in the trash and into landfills. Few people think about that. If you buy a spectacle, you are literally buying future pollution. In 300 years, those spectacles and their batteries will still be polluting the ground and the water. Is this how we measure progress?
- wonder_bread 9y agoWere the Specs ever meant to be more than a hype vehicle though? Obv. if it had blown up into an international phenomenon Spiegel & Co. would have taken it but I feel like it was more just a power strut en route to their IPO to show that people are excited about their platform more so than "Big Brother's"
- module0000 9y ago"Trendy" company selling highly-niche product? Short that company. The probability they are the next iPhone is very low, it's a low-risk short.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoAs I said last time... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988588
- iamleppert 9y agoI have a friend who wears the glasses to every social/party event in my larger friend circle and to public parties, and is one of the biggest attention whores I know. Not even he is narcissistic enough to post the video up. I've never seen one video from the glasses. Best I can tell he wears them as some kind of fashion statement in the weird and quirky SF gay tech scene.
- crispytx 9y agoI think the spectacles are pretty baller. Somebody send me some.
- cptskippy 9y agoHow many were they expecting to sell? This is an incredibly niche product.
- 0xbear 9y agoThat's still almost $5.5 million. Less than the cost of development, but probably not that far off.
- rubidium 9y agoMy reaction: wow 46,000 sold in q2 seems pretty good for a niche product.
- valuearb 9y agoThe Apple watch is a niche product. It did nearly 10 million units and $6B it's first year. Spectacles is a disaster.