Facebook is not building its own branded smartphone, the company insisted Monday in response to a weekend story about the social-networking giant’s supposed plans on a technology blog. But that doesn’t mean the end of the story.
When a service claims to have 500 million users and the mobile Internet dominates technology news, the intersection of the two amounts to a shock wave in the tech industry.
‘Not Accurate’
“The story, which originated in TechCrunch, is not accurate. Facebook is not building a phone,” said Facebook spokesperson Jaime Schopflin. “Our approach has always been to make phones and apps more social. Current projects include everything from an HTML5 version of the site to apps on major platforms to full Connect support with SDKs to deeper integrations with some manufacturers.”
The original story mentioned Facebook engineers Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos as behind the Facebook-branded phone. Hewitt designed Facebook’s iPhone app and Papakipos was formerly in charge of developing Google’s Chrome operating system.
The story has been greeted with widespread skepticism, with many observers and analysts recalling Google’s infamous Nexus One project in which the search giant commissioned hardware from Taiwan-based HTC and marketed it only through its web store and T-Mobile stores.
Although that phone essentially crashed at liftoff and was discontinued after six months (it’s still available for developers), it was considered a success in driving interest in Google’s Android mobile operating system.
Just a ‘Sound Bite’
“The issue with Google’s original plan to sell the Nexus One was the high price, lack of distribution, and the activation process,” said Kirk Parsons, an analyst at JD Power and Associates. “Facebook does not have the resources to sell its own phone the right way. They should expand their brand by integrating it into smartphone and upscale feature devices as Google is doing with the Android software.”
That’s what Facebook…