Snapchat loses further 2 million users in the third quarter of 2018

Snapchat has reportedly lost 2 million users in the third quarter of 2018 and has shrunk further. The app announced in its earnings report that it had lost 3 million users in the second quarter. The share price of Snapchat also crashed to a low of $6.31 due to loss of such huge amount of users. The CEO of Snapchat Evan Spiegel said that the lost customers were mostly Android users because the app does not run on Android as well as it runs on iOS. The CEO also admitted that the Snaps created per day have also dropped from 3.5 billion to 3 billion per day.

It seems the predictions of tech gurus is coming true. Experts warned about a downfall in the Snapchat user base after Instagram and WhatsApp introduced “stories”. Instagram and WhatsApp stories are gaining popularity in developing countries. The CEO explained that they have more users in the US and Europe. Now down to $1.4 billion in cash and securities, Snap will need to start reaching more of those international users or improving monetization of those it still has to keep afloat without outside capital.

WhatsApp story status has 450 million daily users while Insta stories has grown to 400 million daily users. Snapchat faces a problem in third world countries where the phones are older and internet connections are slower. It will face a much more severe threat if WhatsApp and Instagram manage to clone the disappearing chats feature.

The way forward for Snapchat looks to lie in the Android overhaul which will help them in customer retention. It is also depending on the latest Snappable games feature that it introduced recently. The Snappable Tic-Tac-Toe managed to get 80 million users. Spiegel has said that they are aiming to reach break-even in 2018 and full profitability in 2019. At this rate of competition and losing daily users, Snapchat may run out of money rather than reaching profitability.