Snap bets on hardware as Facebook threat looms

GoPro's stock sits 61 per cent below its 2014 IPO price

Snap takes to the road in London on Monday to promote its initial public offering (IPO) with a daring proposition: That it can build hot-selling hardware gadgets and ad-friendly software features fast enough to stay one step ahead of Facebook.

No longer just a purveyor of a smartphone app for disappearing messages, Snap has hired hundreds of hardware engineers, built a secretive product development lab and scoured the landscape for acquisitions as it pursues its newly stated ambition to be “a camera company.”

These efforts, which are aimed at developing hardware and so-called augmented reality technologies, are central to the