Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the company shifted 150,000 of its Spectacles since launch in Q4 2016, a figure TechCrunch said means they are selling at “a slower rate than many would probably guess”.

According to the report, Spiegel said the number is higher than the original iPod but, more significantly, he noted Spectacles was Snap’s first attempt to play in hardware which integrates with its core software activities.

“Our view is that hardware is going to be an important vehicle for delivering our customer experience maybe in a decade. But if we believe it’s going to be important in a decade, we don’t want to be starting a decade from now,” he said.

Snap had already said Spectacles “has not generated significant revenue for us”.

At the time of launch, Snap garnered some exclusivity for Spectacles by sharply limiting the number of locations where the device was available. While this strategy undoubtedly helped garner media attention, the company obviously was not particularly quick to push wider availability after the initial period.