In short: Every seventh American has Snapchat and opens it almost 10.5 times per day on average, Monday data from analytics platform App Ape shows. The ephemeral messaging service is still more popular on Android than iOS where it has 25.4 million and 21.2 million users, respectively, and is generally one of the most frequently launched third-party apps in the country. The 46.5 million users it currently has stateside still aren’t as active as they were in the second quarter of the year, with its daily active user count falling by some 4.5 million over the last ten weeks, as per the same insight service.
Background: Snapchat faced massive backlash at the turn of the year following a centralized decision to completely redesign its mobile app but went back on the move after some months, though not before investors blasted it for concerning revenue projections partially tied to the fact it frustrated users for what the capital markets deemed was no good reason. The company’s flagship product largely stabilized following that episode, at least in the United States, by far its largest market by turnover. For the second quarter of the year, the company reported 188 million daily active users, down by three million sequentially. According to App Ape’s estimates, 17.8 million of those (9.46-percent) are from the U.S. Snapchat traditionally stuck with its DAU figures in order to underline the above-average user engagement rates it’s been recording since its early days, compelling marketers to maintain their investments in its experimental ad products, many of which ended up delivering subpar results, according to previous reports. Snap generated $262.26 million in quarter-three revenue and posted $353.31 million in losses over the same period.
The impact: If Snap’s home market is any indication, the firm is likely to post yet another incremental drop in daily active users for the third quarter of the year. Such a development would underscore its continued struggles to attract new individuals to its platform and deliver on the most important front for the vast majority of investors – growth. As things stand right now, the engagement levels of Snapchat’s young user base are not enough to drive advertisers’ interest away from Facebook’s Instagram which surpassed a billion-user mark in late June, thus ending up on the phone of (nearly) every seventh person in the world and not just the U.S.