So far, Snap has been silent about plans to avoid competitors' imitation and how to realize ar (Augmented Reality). As a newly listed company, Snap recently held its first profit conference call, and gained an in-depth understanding of the company's content platform, advertising network performance and sales of camera sunglasses Spectacles. Snap made a net loss of $230 million in the first quarter of 20 17, while its R&D and operating expenses were as high as $78 million.
As can be seen from the figure, since 20 12, the number of patent applications of Snap company has been increasing year by year, but it has decreased in 20 16. In addition, Snap has continuously enriched the fields of patent application, from the initial UI/UX and network system fields to 9 fields of 20 15. Of course, it should be noted that the analysis results in the figure are based on the incomplete patent data of 20 15 and 20 16. Since the publication of data by the US Patent and Trademark Office will be delayed by 1-2 years, more data about Snap's patent application and approval in recent years will be published in the future.
Although we can't fully know the turn of Snap's intellectual property right at present, according to the data, Snap made great achievements in AR certification and AR field in 20 15, but there was only one related patent before 20 14. Previously, Snap had object recognition, facial recognition, audio recognition, glasses & etc. AR and other 8 patents, accounting for about 15% of the patents published at present.
Patent abstract:
20 15, Snap company has three patents, glasses &; Related to the AR field (glasses are not necessarily real AR products, but they are R&D platforms for AR technology, which is why we often combine them together). Snap recently released a new patent in this field, that is, "Image-based tracking technology in AR system", and also made a detailed introduction-AR technology can be mapped to the surrounding environment and superimposed on a simulated moving image, such as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
In addition, there are 5 patents related to AR R&D, all of which involve object, face and audio recognition, among which 4 patents were submitted on 20 15. Examples related to vision include: filtering objects in sight and analyzing users' emotions during video calls (as shown below).
Generally speaking, the most popular patent type is the well-known UI/UX field. Up to now, there are 10 application interface patents, accounting for 18% of the total patents granted by the company. Snap has shifted its focus to designing more user-friendly UX based on user data, location, good friends and so on.