When Spiegel and the gang released their camera-fitted, Snapchat-ready glasses to the public last November, they had high hopes for their hipster hardware.
But to date, Snap’s only sold 150k units — and now, they’re reportedly stuck with hundreds of thousands of unsold Spectacles.
Oops…
At first, Snap only made its $129 Spectacles available for purchase from a small number of semi-anthropomorphized pop-up vending machines called “Snapbots.”
In February, the company opened up the floodgates to a much wider audience by selling them online. In anticipation of a much larger order volume, they ramped up their production of Spectacles.
But the boost in sales never really came: in Q1, they sold about 60k units, and in Q2, that figure dipped to 45k. Today, they’ve sold around 150k — far less than they projected, given that…
They have a huge surplus sitting around
The Information reports that Snap’s got “hundreds of thousands” of Spectacles sitting around unsold (though that includes unassembled bits and pieces that might be repurposed for other hardware).
In between yacht trips with Miranda Kerr, Evan Spiegel has touted Spectacles as a smash hit, even going so far as to claim they outsold the first iPod — but this report paints a far different picture, providing yet another data point that the demand just isn’t there for “smart” glasses.
Snap stock was also down 4% at closing yesterday. Sorry, Spiegs.