14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is reportedly working hard to become an important player on the mobile phone market. For fear of ending up just a simple application installed on a mobile operating system, Mark Zuckerberg is trying to build a phone for Facebook fans.
That way, addicts of the social network will be offered with a whole package, the hardware and the Facebook environment. This is not the first time that the company is trying to build its own phone, but this time Facebook seems to be more determined to accomplish this achievement.
The New York Times (blog) claims that Facebook has already hired several former Apple software and hardware engineers who had previously worked on building the iPhone. There’s also one particular person who worked on the iPad.
None of these people has been clearly briefed on Facebook’s project to build its own customized phone, but one of Apple’s former employees said he was thoroughly “interrogated” by Zuckerberg on the insides of a smartphone.
When asked about these plans, the company did neither deny nor confirm it was actively working to build a Facebook smartphone and simply pointed to a previous statement: “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers.”
According to sources close to the matter, Facebook is trying to keep a low profile with this project, which is why it won’t hire via its official site.
Rumor has it that Facebook had to pull the plug on several phone projects due to unpredicted difficulties involved, which is why the company has decided to hire people with vast experience in the phone-making business.
This one of the main reasons Facebook hired Apple’s ex-hardware engineers, so that it could design its own phone in and out. According to the latest hearsay, the company will launch its Facebook phone as early as Q4 2012, but more likely next year.