Paul Morris·

Apple Reportedly Working On Its Own Snapchat-Esque Video Sharing Social App

With its smartphone and tablet range now cemented with consumers across all brackets, it is reported that Apple is now looking to focus its attention on appealing to a younger audience with a software-based, Snapchat-style video sharing and editing platform.

According to those familiar with Apple’s future strategy for 2017 and beyond, the Cupertino-based company is looking to mimic the successes enjoyed by the likes of Snapchat and Instagram by launching its own social networking experience for its extremely popular iPhone and iPad hardware.

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Over the years, Apple has worked increasingly hard to make sure that its hardware business continues to grow and gain as much market share as possible. It’s difficult to argue against the fact that the company has done a fantastic job in doing that, but difficult market conditions and rising competition has meant that the hardware side of Apple’s empire has started to slow down in recent times.

With that in mind, it appears that Tim Cook and his team are looking to place an emphasis on Apple’s services business with the hope that an additional revenue stream can be grown from introducing a service or platform that looks to mimic the likes of Snapchat or Instagram.

The key to Apple’s interest in exploring this avenue of increased revenue comes from the amount of time that users actually spend interacting with social media-based services. As an example, the report cites the fact that Facebook users spend around 50 minutes per day interacting with the app on iPhone, whereas Snapchat users are generally active for approximately 30 minutes per day, on average. That level of engagement and commitment to actually viewing, creating and interacting with content has convinced Apple that there’s a younger market that can be capitalized upon that would allow the company to stay relevant in that expanding space.

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The app is being developed in the same Apple department that developed Final Cut Pro and iMovie software, according to the people. Apple hired Joe Weil, the former president of a New York-based video production company, to lead the vision for the project, the people said.

The new app is said to focus on relatively short videos that can be created extremely quickly with the application of filters and scribbles. Users would then be able to share the created videos via existing social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. The interesting thing to note here is that the same sources are also suggesting that while Apple is striving towards a 2017 release, the app may not ever see the light of day, “if it doesn’t meet the company’s timetable and expectations” and the decision is taken to have it fall be the wayside.

Would you consider using a video-based social networking app built by Apple after the company’s previous social failures such as Ping? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

(Source: Bloomberg)

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