Roger Fingas
In a sign of how tough the market for Apple's rumored augmented reality glasses could be, Snap is estimated to have sold a little over 63,800 pairs of Spectacles in the March quarter.
While Snap didn't provide exact numbers in its results, it did admit to making just $8.3 million in its "other revenue" category, according to TechCrunch. Dividing by the Spectacles' $130 pricetag gives a figure of 63,846.
About $4.5 million in Spectacles were sold during the December quarter, or roughly 34,615 units.
Until the February launch of online sales, the Spectacles were essentially an experiment for Snap, sold only through hard-to-find vending machines and a special New York City pop-up store. Even these limited sales only began in November.
The Spectacles are designed to shoot 10- to 30-second clips of first-person video, mainly for sharing in Snapchat, though they can be viewed elsewhere. Footage is shot in a unique circular format, and to dispel privacy concerns, lit rings appear whenever the glasses are recording.
Apple is believed to be developing augmented reality glasses that will ship in 2018, if not later. Exact features are unknown, but the company reportedly has "hundreds" of engineers working in the AR field.
Glasses have so far made little headway in the wearables market. Google's Glass never made it past a developer prototype, and Microsoft's HoloLens has yet to spin off into planned third-party accessories.
Instead the wearables market is still dominated by fitness trackers and smartwatches. The Apple Watch in particular has so far proven successful, although sales are still below those of iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Malcolm Owen
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
20 Comments
This is just a bad product idea. I am open to listen to anyone who can provide feedback on why it is a good one???
It seems pretty simple to me: most people over the age of 20 don't want to strap gear to their bodies in order to accomplish everyday tasks. Google has already made this clear to everyone, I don't understand why any company thinks augmented reality is going to take off in this direction for the majority of the public, it's some backwards logic. A large part of what made the iPhone stellar in the first place was that suddenly so much was available *without* being tethered to or reliant upon anything cumbersome.
Isn't 63,800 "nearly 64,000" not "just over 63,000"?
"In a sign of how tough the market for Apple's rumored augmented reality glasses could be..." Huh? So, a limited use item [Snapping pictures only], that was nary available anywhere [mystery vending machines & a single phantom store in NYC], sold tens of thousands of units. Yeah, this really bodes ill for whatever Apple is looking to deliver.