Friday, 30 September 2016

Snap Inc connected glasses : good or bad new for Google ?

Here we go ! Snapchat is lauching a new product : its own connected sunglasses define as a toy by Snapchat’s CEO. Its a concept already developed by another company which we’ll talk about below in the article. Thoses glasses named « Spectacles » will be able to record 10 seconds of videos such as the app is doing right now.

Spectacles : what is it about ?

The user who wants to start recording something without hang on his phone will put his sunglasses on, click on the stems to launch the tool, a light will turn on for 10 seconds – this can take videos at 115 degrees - then the video will be send via Bluetooth or Wifi to the phone.
You can capture, by connecting the sunglasses via Bluetooth or Wifi to your phone, an entire day of snaps without loading.
Nowadays, sunglasses are definetly an esssential tool for fashion people so the company had to played with the design and colors (3 colors available) .

Snapchat has been launched originally to ease the sharing of pictures and mini videos between friends. Of course, it helps now famous people share easily every minute of their life with their fan. The principle is to make pictures and videos available a certain amount of time (max 10 sec). The application has been developped by students from Standford, California and the company worth now more than 16 billion dollars.
Recently, Snapchat became Snap Inc because they are now developping more than just an app so they have to change their name to in a more general way.

In 2014, the 23-years-old CEO, Evan Spiegel rejected Facebook 3 billion offer.  Now, Snap Inc is stepping on Google’s toes. And it’s even worst than that : Snap Inc wants to succeed where Google, the tech giant, failed ! 


How Snap Inc wants to succeed where Google failed ?

  • First of all :  thanks to a fashion design. Snapchat has young users and they designed for them glasses that they can wear in everyday life. In a nutshell, with Google Glass you look like a geek, with Spectacles you look fun and fashion.



  • Thanks to a much lower price: Spectacles will be much more accessible than Google glasses ! Google glasses costs 1 500 $ whereas Spectacles will be sold for 130$.
  • Thanks to a clear product description: Of course Google glasses price can be explained by all the technology it uses. You can do way more things with Google glasses than with Spectacles. But, maybe that was too much for a first product of that type. They were the first one to launch connected glasses and at the end the user do not even know what it has been made for.  So nobody bought it. Spectacles has been made to take photo: the goal is really clear!   
Of course, it is complicated to compare Google glasses and Spectacles : they doesn't have the same target, it's not the same price, not the same use... Still, they are both connected glasses !

That being said, Spectacles is probably the best thing that could have happened to Google!


Indeed, Spectacles will probably be taken has a toy that 7-year-old-girl will ask their parents for Christmas until a coolest toy will appear the year after. But, it will allow people to get use to connected glasses. Google will probably surf on that trend to launch a new model and try to reach much more people than the first time and than Spectacles.  And, if it works, we can bet that Apple will follow. This will be interesting to watch, stay tuned!


Marine Esposito 
Julia Ibrahim - Ouali 


Sources :




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