Snap Drone Coming? Snapchat Parent Buys Drone Maker, New Video Tech Might Be In The Works

Snap Inc. has acquired Los Angeles-based drone maker Ctrl Me Robotics for around $1 million, Phone Arena reported Saturday. The company has not only purchased the drone-maker’s technology and equipment but is also hiring its development team, including founder Simon Saito Neilson.

The acquisition seems to be part of Snap’s efforts to further its video technology, as Ctrl Me was working on making modifications to camera equipment on third-party drones prior to its acquisition. According to the report, Snapchat's parent company could be working on aerial and drone-based photography and video shooting, which is very popular on online social networks. Snap could be working on providing its users with a ‘flying camera’ — drone-based video and photo capture on demand.

Read: Snapchat Drone In the Works? Company Reportedly Working On Technology

This is not the first time that Snap has been reported to be working on drone-based technology. A New York Times report from January stated that the company was working on drone-based technology.

The Times report also stated the company was working on technology to take overhead videos and images. Investing in such hardware is Snap’s effort at gathering diverse visual data, which would, in turn, bolster user’s communications using Snapchat. According to Snapchat ‘s offering prospectus issued at the time of its initial public offering (IPO), an average Snapchat user opened the app more than 18 times a day and around 2.5 billion images and videos were sent each day using the app.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel also spoke about the company’s future plans for camera-based technology in a video for investors in February. He said the cameras don’t just help create memories, but they are in fact changing the way we communicate.

“We’re at the beginning of what cameras can do,” he told investors.

Snap ventured into camera-based hardware with its Spectacles launch last year. The Snapchat Spectacles are sunglasses which can shoot short videos and take photos from the user’s line of vision. While Google Glass met its demise despite offering camera and augmented reality technology, the Snapchat Spectacles were sold out at launch. Spectacles also represent the company’s vision for hardware — Snap, it seems, is aspiring to build on Snapchat’s success by offering users unique ways to capture videos and images.

Read: Snapchat, Instagram Twice As Popular With Black Teens, Compared To White Teens: Survey

Snap has had a unique trajectory — the company started out as Snapchat. Its namesake app was one of many photo/video-based apps, until it started offering a ‘Stories’ feature – users could post videos that would stay on the app for 24 hours and then disappear. This unique offering attracted users and helped the app carve a niche for itself, so much so, that Facebook and Instagram had to come out with similar features eventually. The app’s success culminated in an IPO early this year, which was one of the largest public offerings in recent times for a tech company.