Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps in the world, and the company still doesn’t have an app for the iPad. And you would be surprised to know that the social media firm still doesn’t have any firm plans for developing the app for the most popular tablet platform.

Instagram still doesn’t have a dedicated app for iPadOS and the social media giant still has no plans for developing one, which is quite surprising. In response to a user question, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has explained that the company wants to build an iPadOS app but it doesn’t have enough resources to do so or prioritize it over other features.

Adam said that the Instagram app is iOS only because the engineering resources the company has would be better spent on adding more features to its existing apps. Apparently, the company has “lots to do” on the features front and those things would be more lucrative than developing an iPadOS app. “We’d like to build an iPad app, but we only have so many people and lots to do, and it hasn’t bubbled up as the next best thing to do yet,” said Adam.

In the past, the Facebook-owned company hasn’t been clear on why and how it prioritizes some features such as a TikTok-like video editing tool over other features. For example, when it brought Instagram messages to the web, it didn’t explain why it prioritized the feature over an iPad app. It just mentioned that it helps people “stay in touch with the people you care about.”

You can use Instagram on the iPad using the web browser, but a native app is always much better and faster than a web app. There were various third-party iPad apps for Instagram, but they were all killed when Instagram changed its APIs.

Our Take

It’s a bit hard to believe that Instagram, which generated a whopping $20 billion in revenue in Q4 2020, doesn’t have enough resources to bring an iPadOS app. It should be noted that it has an app for Windows 10, which not many people use. The real reason could be something different, such as bringing even more exciting apps to smartphones that could add more revenue.