Snap has lost money every year as a public company. On Tuesday, it asked shoppers to spend $2,195 on glasses.
CEO Evan Spiegel is betting people will pay. He thinks they are sick of phone screens.
Augmented reality, or AR, lays digital images over the real world. Picture a video floating in your view instead of on a phone.
The glasses are called Specs. They are Snap's first AR glasses built for the public, not developers.
Buyers pay $2,195, plus a $200 deposit they can get back. Wall Street wasn't sold, and the stock fell about 4% by midday.
Specs ship later this year in the U.S., U.K., and France. They run nearly four hours on a charge.
The price is the headline. At $2,195, Specs cost more than 15 times Snap's $130 camera glasses from 2016.
Those old glasses never caught on. The new pair is lighter and packs a bigger display.
Snap is dead serious about this push. It set up a new unit called Specs Inc. in January just to build them.
Spiegel is going up against far richer rivals. Meta has had some luck with its Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Google is building AI glasses with Samsung and eyewear brands. Both can pay for costly hardware with ad profits.
Snap can't lean on that. It has to fund this bet while losing money.
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There is a mismatch baked into this launch. Snap's users skew young.
Young users usually don't have $2,195 for eyewear. That is a tough match.
One analyst said the timing is rough. "This is like the worst time for any company to be launching any kind of premium product," said Jitesh Ubrani of IDC.
He pointed to shaky confidence and rising prices. Pricey gadgets are a hard sell right now.
History isn't kind here either. Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro never became a must-have.
Meta also pulled back on virtual reality this year. The road from cool demo to hit product is long.
Spiegel is playing for the long term. He frames Specs as an early step toward a world after phones.
He has called Specs the most capable AR computer you can buy today. Rivals would surely argue that point.
Specs also court app makers. Snap built in tools from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor so coders can create AR apps.
He even tests the glasses at home with his kids. They swap screen time for AR laser tag.
Snap also plans parent controls. Those would let parents share the glasses with their kids more safely.
The real question is about money. Can a company that bleeds cash fund this vision long enough to win?
A $2,195 price tag is a big ask. A 4% stock drop says it won't be easy.
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