Contrary to reports of a Facebook Android phone (read, New Facebook smartphone on the horizon?), insiders now say that instead of building their own smartphone, Facebook will be integrated into the home screen of the Android OS. According to the WSJ:
“The social network is developing software for mobile devices powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system that displays content from users’ Facebook accounts on a smartphone’s home screen—the first screen visible when they turn on the device… The company now offers an app for Android devices, but through agreements with smartphone makers would make news feeds and other information immediately viewable. “It is putting Facebook first,” a person familiar with the matter said of Facebook’s initiative.”
At a TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco in September, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said the social network giant is focused on mobile devices.
“It is really clear from the stats and my own personal intuition that a lot of energy in the ecosystem is going to mobile, not desktop (computers),” Zuckerberg said during an on-stage interview.
“That is the future,” he continued. “We are going to be doing killer stuff there.”
Facebook has made a priority of following its more than one billion members onto smartphones and tablet computers, tailoring services and money-making ads for mobile devices.
“Now, we are a mobile company,” Zuckerberg said at the conference.
Zuckerberg rejected suggestions that Facebook would make its own smartphone, adamant that the company had no intention of stepping into the fiercely competitive handset hardware arena.
“Apple, Google, everyone builds phones — we are going in the opposite direction,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
