Once again the rumors are flying around the tech industry and websites that Facebook is considering and/or developing a Facebook phone.
My question is – why?
One would have to assume the purpose of a Facebook phone is to provide the user with an awesome Facebook experience on that handset. That experience would have to include tight integration with the phone’s OS so that your Facebook Timeline and other info would permeate the phone at all levels.
So now that you have your Facebook phone what will you do for apps? Maybe it gets connected to the Android App Store if it is an Android based phone. It is most certainly not going to be connected to the Windows Phone Marketplace or the App Store on iTunes. We all know the deal there.
Maybe Facebook will create its own app store and let developers submit their apps for inclusion there as well as in other app stores.
Seems like a lot of overhead doesn’t it?
So why not give up this idea of a Facebook phone and just build terrific mobile apps for all the major platforms out there like iOS, Android and Windows Phone? To me that makes a lot more sense than trying to build an entire new ecosystem around a phone.
I guess they could just be talking about branding a phone as a Facebook handset – that would probably be OK. If that is what they are talking about – I just do not get the feeling that is the desire here.
To make a Facebook Phone or not to make a Facebook Phone – that is the question!
What do you think?
