Snap's Spectacles Aren't Selling, And It's A Problem

Investing.com - Snap reportedly has hundreds of thousands of unsold Spectacles just sitting in storage, The Information magazine reported earlier this week.Compared to the 150,000 that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel says the company has sold, that doesn’t sound good. Snap launched Spectacles, a wearable camera that resembles sci-fi sunglasses, in time for the holiday shopping season last year. At the peak of their hype, people were willing to pay over $1,000 for a pair, but after Spectacles became more widely available, it appears that demand dried up. Even more worrying is the fact the Snap may have been selling the glasses at a loss. Snap prices their Spectacles at $129.99. However, they only developed the Spectacles after acquiring a company called Vergence Labs, which used to sell their wearable cameras for between $300 and $500 – about three-and-a-half times more. Spiegel doesn’t seem to be in a rush for Spectacles success, having said that “hardware is going to be an important vehicle for delivering our customer experience maybe in a decade.”Still, if the 150,000 figure for Spectacles sold is correct, that’s revenue of only $19.5 million, which barely makes a dent to last quarter’s net loss of $443 million. Snap describes itself as a camera company, and for its sake, Snap's Spectacles need to be successful. Asking investors to stay patient for the next ten years is a very questionable proposition.