"The devices, which will feature Facebook social-networking services, are due to be introduced in Europe in the first half of 2011 and the U.S. in the second half," reports Bloomberg, citing three people familiar with the matter.
In an interview with TechCrunch -- which first broke news of the phone -- Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said of the company's mobile strategy: "Our goal is to make it so there's as little friction as possible to having a social experience."
Ideally, "Your phone already knows who you are, and personalizes everything, including your installed apps, based on your interests and your social graph," TechCrunch writes of Facebook's mobile plans.
"Facebook has already tried to do this to some extent on the web with its Instant Personalization feature, but Zuckerberg says that it really isn't possible ... to personalize the entire web experience without building a browser," TechCrunch explains. "He hints that this isn't the case with mobile -- and that Facebook may be able to eventually offer a way to turn your entire phone social."
Meanwhile, word that the phones will run Google's Android operating system suggests that Facebook and the search giant are closely aligning their mobile strategies for the future -- or, at least, the immediate future.
"I mean, who knows, 10 years down the road, maybe we'll build our own operating system or something, but who knows," Zuckerberg tells TechCrunch. "But for now, I think, everything is going to be shades of integration, rather than starting from the ground up and building a whole system."
Regarding Facebook's rationale, Bloomberg explains that the top social network is "redoubling efforts to reach mobile users, many of whom access the site on smartphones ... About a fourth of the company's more than 500 million users log on to Facebook from wireless devices."
"Making access to Facebook easier on hand-held devices will be crucial for adding users in emerging markets, where the mobile internet is 'leapfrogging' web access on desktop PCs," notes the Financial Times.
A Facebook phone, or at least Facebook mobile software, would save the company the trouble of tailoring its mobile apps and services to every operating system under the sun. As ZDNet notes, "People have been pointing out for years that the smartphone operating system space has too many competitors, and that it has yet to enjoy the sort of slimming down that has taken place in the mainframe, minicomputer and PC markets."
Mobile-handset manufacturer INQ Mobile -- which has previously sold phones with Facebook features -- is expected to produce the phones, which will be carried by AT&T, sources tell Bloomberg.
COMMENTARY: I must be losing my touch, but I didn't think that Facebook was serious about the smartphone idea. I also got it wrong with the BlackBerry tablet PC.
Now it is all starting to make sense to me. Facebook has 500 million members and growing. If Facebook can have its own mobile phone, they can control all mobile ads through their own network and keep all the profits for themselves. And why not, Apple is doing this already with the iAD network. If you want to run an ad on the iPhone, advertisers need to have it approved and placed through Apple iAD.
I still believe that if you are going to enter a market you are unfamiliar with or no experience in, you cannot introduce a product that is just incrementally better than that of the competition. It has to be very innovative and technologically superior to that of the competition, otherwise why bother. The Apple's touchscreen iPhone was a game-changer when it entered the the smartphone market, It took competitors by surprise and it took them over two years just to catch up. In the meantime, the iPhone has 60 million iPhone owners and is number three in smartphones, although Android-based phones are predicted to pass them by the end of the year.
TechCrunch says that the new Facebook smartphone will "already knows who you are, and personalizes everything, including your installed apps, based on your interests and your social graph." I know smartphones are "smart", but the new Facebook smartphone will need more than that in order to spur adoption.
I have a wait and see attitude about this new Facebook phone. It's a smart move to introduce it slowly, and beta-testing it in Europe makes sense, before a full roll-out.
Courtesy of an article dated September 23, 2010 appearing in MediaPost Publicatons Around The Net
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