Apple, In Social Push, Is Reportedly Developing A Snapchat-Like Video Editing App

As its hardware sales plateau, Apple is reportedly developing a proprietary iPhone and iPad app that will enable users to edit videos and then share them to various social networks.

In a bid to capitalize on the enormous popularity of platforms like Facebook and Snapchat, Apple’s video-sharing app would allow users to record and then edit their creations using filters and drawing features — not unlike those popularized on Snapchat, according to Bloomberg, which was first to report the development of the forthcoming app. (Instagram, too, released a clone of Snapchat’s popular Stories feature earlier this month). Users would then be able to deploy their creations via SMS or email, as well as share them on social media.

The as-yet-unnamed app is being designed for one-handed editing, with the intention that the entire process takes less than one minute, according to Bloomberg. In one prototype of the app, which is still in preliminary stages of development, the video field appears as a square — the default format on Instagram

Apple’s new video editor would likely be packaged as a standalone app, Bloomberg reports, though Apple might also opt to integrate the technology within the existing iPhone and iPad camera applications. It is currently being developed by the same team behind Final Cut Pro and iMovie with an eye toward a 2017 release.  However, it is possible that Apple might still shelve the project altogether, Bloomberg says.

This isn’t Apple’s first step into the social networking space. In 2010, the company launched Ping, a music-centric social network within iTunes, only to shutter the service two years later. Apple’s new video sharing features would arrive on the heels of a new iPhone release and a new operating system — the iPhone 7 and iOS 10 — which are slated to drop next month.