Is Snap Already Giving Up on Its Selfie Drone After Just Four Months?

It appears the end is in sight for Snap's Pixy.

Snap is reportedly shelving Pixy just four months after it was released. Pixy is a palm-sized selfie drone launched by Snap in late April and comes with a price tag of $250.

According to Engadget, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced to employees that the company is reprioritizing its resources, resulting in the shut down of Pixy. The selfie drone was designed to take off from and land in the user's hand and featured four preset flight paths to capture pictures and videos that are easily transferable and shareable on Snapchat.

It appears that Snap will continue selling the Pixy devices that are already in the market and are available on the website but will no longer continue producing it.

Snap Faces the Turbulent Economy

Like many other tech companies, SnapChat parent Snap has felt the brunt of the economic downturn. Just last month, Snap announced that it saw its weakest quarterly sales growth in all of history, with its share price shrinking up to 40%. The tech company added that it will slow down hiring in response to the dismal second quarter results.

TechCrunch reported that hardware has not been Snap's biggest strength. The Pixy selfie drone is the second of Snap's hardware ventures, with the first being the Spectacle glasses, which earned mixed reviews. The Spectacle glasses however have found innovation in the AR space after it was originally designed to be a face-worn camera.

The same cannot be said for Snap's Pixy selfie drone, which the report described as "a bit of a brightly colored toy, lacking in the sophistication (and years of development) of a DJI." The only consolation for Pixy selfie drone owners is that they now have a piece of tech history in their hands, much like a collector's item that would maybe increase in value in the next few decades.

Snap Expresses Dissatisfaction with Q2 Results

In July, Snap told its investors that the economy worsened quicker than expected, warning that the company's revenue growth would be in the lower range of estimates. According to CNN, Snap announced that while its revenue grew 13% to $1.1 billion during the second quarter, it also faced a quarterly net loss of $422 million, more than double the $152 million loss in the second quarter of 2021.

Describing Q2 as "more challenging" than Snap expected, the company underscored that the financial results did "not reflect the scale of our ambition" and expressed dissatisfaction over the results despite the struggling economy. Citing "uncertainties related to the operating environment," Snap refused to provide guidance for Q3 and instead highlighted the 18% year-over-year growth of its daily active users.

Snap's stock dropped 65% since 2022 began and the company admitted it missed its sales and profit estimates for Q1. In response to the dismal numbers, Snap promised to "reaccelerate growth" by finding new revenue sources. In June, it announced a subscription service called Snapchat+ that is expected to bring in more revenue for the company, and a web-based version of SnapChat that could drive users to download the app on their phones.