SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) –
Facebook fueled fresh talk
Friday about its own mobile
phone after the leading
social network scheduled a
press announcement for
next week.
Shortly after the Facebook
invitation went out for the
April 4 event, the technology
news site TechCrunch
reported the announcement
would be a modified version
of the Google Android
operating system with “deep
native Facebook
functionality.”
Another report on “9 to 5
Google” said Facebook
designing the software for
the new smartphone, which
would be made by Taiwan’s
HTC.
Facebook’s invitation said
only “Come See Our New
Home On Android.”
The reports, if accurate,
could explain the long
speculation about a
“Facebook phone” to help
the social network better
monetize its mobile platform
by featuring Facebook
prominently on the phone.
Facebook has long held firm
it has no intention of
building its own
smartphone, saying instead
it would rather weave access
to the social network into
software running the gamut
of handsets.
News of the April 4 event at
social network’s main
campus in the Silicon Valley
city of Menlo Park came as
the research firm IDC
released a Facebook-backed
study showing that
smartphones have become
people’s close friends in the
US.
US smartphone owners tend
to be connected from the
instant they rise until they fall
sleep and revel in every
minute of it, according to the
study.
A weeklong IDC survey of
more than 7,000 people
ranging in age from 18 to 44
years old with iPhones or
Android-powered
smartphones showed that
four out of five check their
handsets within 15 minutes
of waking.
The top three applications
used were for messaging;
Web browsing, and
Facebook, in that order,
according to IDC.
“People have a universal
need to connect with others,
especially those they care
deeply about,” IDC
researchers said.
“This coupled with mass
market adoption of
smartphones means that
social engagement via
phones has become
mainstream.”
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.
“We want to build a system
deeply integrated in every
device people want to use.”
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/03/facebook-phone-may-ring-true-april-4/

No matter how it goes, we are waiting.

Dis is a welcome development