Snapchat, no longer bleeding users, tests Android app redesign

Snap is finally starting to turn things around. 

Snapchat’s growth has finally stabilized after two straight quarters of losing users, following an unpopular redesign. What’s more, the company is making substantially more money off the users it does have, the company revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report for 2018. 

Snapchat’s growth held steady at 186 million daily active users, the same as last quarter. That’s still down from the 191 million it counted this time last year, but this shows the app has been able to reverse what’s been its most worrying trend. 

The company’s interim CFO, Lara Sweet, said Snap is “cautiously optimistic” going into next quarter. Sweet didn’t provide any specific numbers, but said the company isn’t anticipating another decline. 

Snap also shared an update on its long-awaited Android app redesign. After teasing the update for more than a year, CEO Evan Spiegel now says it has started to test the app with a “small percentage” of its users. Snap has previously blamed its slow and buggy Android app for hindering growth.

“Our engineering team remains focused on rebuilding our Android application to improve performance and quality. Early tests show promising results especially on less performant devices, including a 20 percent reduction in the average time it takes to open Snapchat,” Spiegel said. “Given these results, we have started rolling out the new version to a small percentage of our community, and we look forward to providing an improved Android experience to more devices and regions over time.”

This story is developing…