Snap’s adventurous foray into the hardware market continues. Cheddar and then Verge reported that Snap is busy working on Version 2 of Spectacles.
Here is Alex Heath from Cheddar:
But Snap won’t stop with version two of Spectacles. The company has also begun work on a more ambitious, third generation of Spectacles with a new design and two cameras, the people said. Snap has prototyped an aluminum design with more circular lens frames and two cameras that would allow for 3D-like depth effects in videos. Snap has additionally considered including a built-in GPS and a leather case, as well as a potential price tag of around $300, which would be more than double the current $130 cost for Spectacles.
Snap had lost $40 million on its first version, selling “only” 150,000 glasses.
In my earlier analysis of Snap’s Spectacles, I had made the argument that sales figure of 150,000 was not bad (yes, I understand your skepticism. Read the full analysis). The estimated $40M loss was mainly due to excess volume of unsold inventory than ran in the excess of a few hundred thousand units. A primary driver of the losses was poor inventory planning (given the noisy forecasting and production plan).
This time around, Snap seems to be doing a bit more channel planning: Snap is in talks with Luxxotica and Warby Parker. With meager data, it is not clear how good the planning is. It is also unclear how seamless the Augmented Reality (AR) tech will be for the third-generation glasses. Sure, there are unknown issues with social norms and aesthetics, and Snap always seems to be stretching social norms. However, it is true that tech’s entry into wearables and hardware operations continues to be a challenging task.
—
If you like what you read, I welcome you to subscribe to OWL Mail and have the blog digest delivered to your inbox. It’s free and I respect your privacy (no spam).