Visitors to the Amazon.com can find the video-capturing eyewear selling for $129.99 in black, red and light blue.
Along with placing physical vending machines in select cities, like London and Paris, the self-described “camera company” recently began hawking the smart sunglasses online at Spectacles.com.
For the privilege of owning a pair of the shades, Snap is charging European customers nearly $170 -- about $50 more than U.S. consumers.
Stateside, online shoppers have been able to purchase Spectacles since February. Previously, Snap sold the glasses via vending machine.
Spectacles can record 10-second video snippets, which are designed to approximate one’s natural field of vision. That's thanks to a 115-degree lens, which records circular video.
To date, no company has been able to convince a critical mass of consumers to wear connected gadgets on their faces.
Google notoriously spent millions in development and marketing dollars before giving up on a consumer-facing version of Glass initiative. Yet Snap seems to have learned from Google's failure.
Spectacles’ price tag is far more reasonable than the $1,500 that Google charged for Glass. Snap’s glasses are also being sold as a single-purpose device, which is historically much easier to market.
Unlike Google, Snapchat enjoys a strong bond with young consumers -- the ideal demographic for starting trends and popularizing products.
As a public company, Snap is under pressure to generate revenue streams beyond advertising.
Analysts were not happy with the company’s first earnings report last month. While revenue of $149.6 million was up, year-over-year, it was less that the $158 million they were anticipating.
Snap also revealed a quarterly net loss of about $2.2 billion, which it blamed on “stock-based compensation.” On the news, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel admitted: “We still have a lot of work to do.”
Supporting future growth, Spiegel is betting on faster mobile connections and Snap’s ability to continue “removing friction from the creative process.”
Year-over-year, Snap saw Snapchat daily active users (DAUs) increase 36% to 166 million in the first quarter. From the fourth quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2017, DAUs increased by 5%. Year-over-year, average revenue per user (ARPU) rose 181% to $0.90, in the first quarter.