Snapchat ended the quarter with an average of 188 million daily active users, compared to 191 million at the end of Q1. That’s a drop of 2 percent, or 3 million users, since the last quarter, and marks the first time that user count has dropped in the company’s corporate history.
The drop in daily active users is an unfortunate turn for the company, as it struggled with a tepid reaction to its app redesign late last year as well as continuing problems with its Android app. That redesign, which the company had launched at the beginning of this year, had led to a widespread backlash, which included celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Chrissy Teigenpublicly chastising the company.
In his prepared remarks, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the decline was primarily driven by disruption caused by the aforementioned redesign. “It has been approximately six months since we broadly rolled out the redesign of our application, and we have been working hard to iterate and improve Snapchat based on the feedback from the community,” he said.
The earnings report didn’t have any specific sales figures for its latest Spectacles hardware, though it did report $2 million in non-advertising revenue. Spiegel said the company is still getting feedback from customers about it, and will continue to improve it over time. “When combined with our efforts in augmented reality, we believe Spectacles represent an exciting opportunity as we build towards a future where computing is overlaid on the world,” he said.
Snap did reveal that 11 of its Shows now have a monthly audience of over 10 million users, which is up from the 7 million in last quarter. “The number of people that watch Publisher Stories and Shows on iOS every day has grown by more than 15 percent this year,” said Spiegel. Users spend an average of over 30 minutes on Snapchat every day, he added, and user retention for people older than 35 has increased more than 8 percent.
