If you have used Snapchat on both Android and iOS, you will know that the app offers a smoother experience on the iPhone despite it having the same UI/UX on both platforms. Snapchat’s official Android is buggy and slow, with the video and photo quality being inferior to its iOS counterpart even though many Android phones now come with a camera that can rival the iPhone.

Despite all the criticism that Snapchat’s Android app receives on various online forums, the company has done very little to improve its Android app over the years. Turns out, there is a reason for that. Snapchat’s IPO filing reveals that the app is more popular on iOS devices in spite of Android devices having a larger chunk of the market share. This has led Snapchat to prioritise development for the iOS version of the app over its Android version.

The company clearly knows that the Android version of its app is inferior to its iOS counterpart and the risk it entails. The company mentions in its IPO that if it is “unable to improve operability of our products on smartphones with Android operating systems, and those smartphones become more popular and fewer people use smartphones with iOS operating systems, our business could be seriously harmed.”

Maybe Snapchat never realised that its app is not as popular on Android as it is on iOS due to all the issues it has, which leads frustrated users into uninstalling it.

So, until and unless Snapchat’s Android app becomes as popular as its iOS counterpart, us Android users will continue to be treated like second-class citizens from Snap’s development team.