Mark Zuckerberg: No, Facebook Isn’t Making A Phone
Rumors abound that Facebook is designing its own phone, causing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to settle the discussion once and for all by saying that there are no plans for a Facebook phone.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company isn’t planning on creating a Facebook version of a smartphone in a conference call with financial analysts and reporters earlier this week. He said that making a phone or smartphone “wouldn’t really make much sense for us to do,” reports ComputerWorld. However, Zuckerberg said that the company wants to focus on increasing “the depth of the experience in addition to just growing users,” and that as of the now, Facebook would rather focus more on integrating itself into other phones rather than making its own device, reports the LA Times.
“You’ll see us do things like support Apple in the iOS integration that they wanted to do,” the Facebook CEO said. “There are lots of things that you can build in other operating systems as well that aren’t really building out a whole phone, which I think really wouldn’t make much sense for us to do.”
Though Facebook is looking to integrate itself into iOS, it might not want to take it’s mind completely off of making its own phone, notes Forbes. “Selling its own phone would offer Facebook a way to monetize mobile users in a new way,” writes Tomio Geron. “Currently all app purchases and in-app virtual goods transactions on iOS are done through Apple’s App Store. The same holds for Google’s Android platform. While Facebook noted in its call that it is rolling out more ad products on mobile such as ‘sponsored stories,’ it can’t right now monetize the transactions on mobile. With its own phone, it could.”
What do you think? Should Facebook make its own phone?
