It is almost third time, when Facebook (FB) has decided to introduce its own mobile phone in the market by next year. According to a report published in New York Times past Sunday that says, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in talks with several engineers and he has recruited half a dozen engineer in its mobile team including engineers from Apple.
Back in 2010 Tech Crunch disclosed FB’s plan that it was considering making a phone (hardware) or an operating system for its own product fearing from the future popularity of iPhone and Android phones particularly when Google came up with its phone Nexus One.
Later, All Things D reported that FB was in talks with HTC for introducing a phone called “buffy” and later HTC introduced ChaCha and Salsa having a dedicated place for Facebook on them.
Although, there may be other number of ways, FB can safeguard its future, but after Google completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility for US $ 12. 5 billion last week and Google’s possible future plans of bringing its own mobile phones that will work seamlessly with its own OS Android, FB is more threatened and has decided to take its chance in this unknown territory of hardware development.
NY Times quotes an employee of Facebook as, “Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms”.
Analyst believe that how a company that is known for social network (application) can build a hardware with similar efficiency that a customer demands today. Even bigger consumer electronics giants like HP, Dell and Sony have failed miserably as this domain did not belong to them.
At the end of March, Facebook had more than 900 million active users and the number of users accessing the social network through their mobiles had reached to 500 million in April. These loyal users could prove to be a real asset whenever Facebook introduces its phone, provided everything else is perfect for it including design, hardware software integration, loads of new applications and the price of the phone.
