Leak: Snapchat Enters Hardware Manufacturing With Their New Snapchat Spectacles
As if there weren’t enough glasses manufactures in the world already, Snapchat moves into the hardware space with their new venture, the Snapchat Sunglasses.
A leaked video for the official commercial reveals what the glasses look like. Simply dubbed “Spectacles,” these glasses have a small yellow LED ring in the upper left hand corner of the frame. This ring seems to flash, which indicates that the spectacles are recording the moment at hand. The commercial, which is approximately 30 seconds long, jumps from moments that a person may want to capture: playing with a dog, pushing a child on the swing, unveiling a butterfly, a child’s birthday, bubbles, etc.
It can be inferred that the glasses only record up to ten seconds; however, there’s no other information on the glasses at this time. According to Business Insider, “[We] obtained the footage after a tipster sent us a link on YouTube. Snapchat exerted a copyright claim and took it down after Business Insider reached out. We captured the footage for news purposes before it was taken down. It’s unclear whether the video is an internal video for promotional purposes only, or a precursor to a major product launch.”
It’s been known for years that Snapchat had plans to enter hardware manufacturing, and if they were officially going to plunge themselves into the industry, it was going to be in glasses development.
The company started production on these supposed “secret” sunglasses back in 2014 (though it could have started much earlier than that). In March 2014, Snapchat acquired Vergence Labs, a glasses company that made spectacles that could also record video, for $15 million. Vergence Labs was known for “Epiphany Eyewear,” a collection of smart glasses (a la Google Glass) that captures video and stores up to 32GB of data.
Sometime following the purchase of Vergence Labs, Snapchat hired Lauryn Morris, an eyewear designer who has designed sunglasses for Zac Posen and Michael Kors, two huge names in fashion design. Of course, Snapchat then went on a hiring spree, gathering talented people from companies like GoPro, Nokia, and Qualcomm’s Vuforia team. This extensive hiring was meant for their “Snap Labs” division, a department of Snapchat that — one can assume — is dedicated to developing and producing hardware for the company.
Not long after, 26-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel was spotted walking around in public with a prototype of the SnapGlass. They were difficult to identify because they closely resemble a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers, albeit thicker and a little more awkward. Still, not one person could discern whether they were actually glasses developed by Snapchat or just another pair of Wayfarer knockoffs.
Interestingly, Zach Kahn, Vox Media’s Brand Partnerships representative, spotted a peculiar billboard on Wall Street not too long ago.
5 days later, it changed. pic.twitter.com/4l6p5kLUMK
— Zach Kahn???? (@zkahn94) September 23, 2016
According to him, the billboard changed a few days later with what seems to be the iconic Snapchat ghost much larger than normal, wearing what could be interpreted as a pair of glasses, solidifying the leak that Snapchat is in fact working on a pair of sunglasses.
Additionally, the leaked commercial concludes with “Spectacles by Snap Inc.” It seems Snapchat is rebranding themselves as well, going from simply “Snapchat” to “Snap Inc,” indicating that the company is ready to take on more challenges than simply developing new filters for their app of the same name.
An official statement has not been released by the company, and Spectacles has no release date as of yet.
Even though the commercial has been removed from YouTube, you can still watch it in its entirety over at Business Insider.
[Featured Image by Jae C. Hong/AP Images]
