Snap, which is the parent company of the immensely popular app Snapchat, no longer sees itself just as a social media platform but more as a camera company. This may come as a surprise to a lot of its users but it is a smart choice considering competition from Instagram and Whatsapp, who have heavily borrowed from SnapChat's key features.
In a video Snap CEO, Evan Spiegel, has expressed that they were strategically placed to have an edge over any other companies out there as they already have radicalised the way people are now using images to communicate with each other, similar to the way people adapted towards the written word to emote themselves in the past.
Speigel explained "If you think about the keyboard and the way that sort of became the primary input for everything you do on your computer -- everything starts with that flashing cursor -- with Snapchat, the camera has become the primary input for the phone."
Snapchat recently has introduced a piece of wearable technology, which they have dubbed as Snap Spectacles. With a pair of specially designed sunglasses, the user can take videos that will be able to show their point of view exclusively in Snapchat.
This technology actually has found quite a following among the millennial crowd with its unique marketing strategy. It was earlier only available via Snpabots, which popped up randomly all over the place but has now been made available for online purchase in the United states at $129 with plans to phase it out slowly in other countries.
Speigel had put his vision across by saying that "Before, cameras were the best way to perfectly save or record something that you saw. They sort of helped augment memory -- but now, you know, cameras augment the way that we talk."
It is too early to say if Snap is going to make a dent in the camera industry, where bigwigs like Nikon, Canon, Leica are already giving each other a tough competition. But one thing for sure is that we are going to come across some very interesting propositions from a company that is standing on the bridge of being a social media platform and a camera company, simultaneously. But after a successful leap into becoming a public enterprise, time will say where this statement takes them.
