Facebook is on the verge of releasing a new smartphone of their own , says New York Times. According to some of their unnamed sources this new brain-child of Zuckerberg may hit the market next year.
The news also confirms that Facebook has already hired six former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad.
Earlier in November Facebook had tapped HTC to build a smartphone that integrates the social network at its core in an effort code-named "Buffy". Definitely Zuckerberg is thinking to take this social networking based company to a next level. It should be noted as well that in February 2011 at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled two new smartphones that feature dedicated Facebook buttons: the HTC ChaCha, which eventually became the HTC Status and the HTC Salsa.
Recently the company has lost more than $17 billion (initial valuation $104 billion) with stocks falling and their Initial Public Offering (IPO) also being marked a failure by financial experts, the company is trying its best to expand their way into the smartphone manufacturing.
Well now Facebook is busy planning to build a smartphone that is heavily integrated with their social network. May be this explains the $1 billion Instagram deal and the company's keenness to enter the app-race with a separate Facebook App-Store of their own; also not to mention Facebook's interest in buying the 'Opera'. It seems Zuckerberg is onto something which is more than a rumor. But if Facebook will choose to design a smartphone from the ground up and handle all the hardware and software themselves, it will be very difficult to come up with a truly competitive product.
It's still messy to guess about FB’s plans. A lot of questions are yet to be answered, like What about the OS of the smartphone ? Is it going to be a Android ? or rather a modified forked Android ? or whether a new OS is on the way ? May be we should wait and watch. It would be great if Facebook launches some cheap price tagged smartphones. Then this could be a tough competition between Faceebook and Android maker Google.
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