Meta-owned popular photo-sharing service, Instagram, started off as an iPhone app. The social media platform has separate apps for Android and the web. However, it doesn’t have a dedicated app for iPads. To compare, Instagram has a dedicated version for Android tablets. Yet, the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant reportedly doesn’t have any plans to optimise the platform for the iPad.
According to a report by 9to5Mac, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has once again confirmed that an iPad app is not a priority for him. This means iPad users who are expecting an iPadOS version of the app have to wait some more.
What the Instagram CEO has to sayWhile responding to user questions on Instagram Stories, Mosseri was asked whether the company was planning to develop a dedicated app for iPad users. In reply, the Instagram CEO stated that he is currently not actively working on any such development.
Mosseri also noted that having an iPad app would be “a good thing to have at some point” could be beneficial in the future, but he thinks that there are other new features he deems that are more important at the moment. Given the circumstances, Instagram is less likely to prioritise an iPad-specific layout update.
Replying to an X post shared by YouTuber Marques Brownlee in 2022, Mosseri said that the number of users who access Instagram from an iPad is “still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority”. He said that a dedicated Instagram app for iPads will arrive “at some point,” however, he also noted that his team is “very heads down on other things.”
https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1498046814288633857Why Instagram is not ‘worried’ about an iPad appTo compare, iPads also have a much smaller user base than the iPhone. In the second quarter of 2023, Apple shipped more than 42 million iPhone units. Meanwhile, the company shipped only 10 million units during the same period, IDC data claims.
However, other Meta platforms like Facebook have a dedicated iPadOS app. Instagram, as the platform, is more suitable on iPhones due to the availability of better cameras on this device. However, having a dedicated iPad app is expected to improve the experience as it will allow users to view the photos and videos on a much larger screen.
Just like Instagram, Meta’s new microblogging platform, Threads, also lacks an iPadOS version. This limits how users interact with the latest social media platforms. In August, the company launched a web version of Threads that works on desktops and tablets.