Jun 9, 2011 17:31 GMT  ·  By

Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC has just announced that its HTC Salsa Facebook phone will be available in Taiwan via Chunghwa Telecom for NT$12,900 (about $450).

The announcement comes only one day after the phone was introduced in India via online retailer Flipkart.

However, it appears that the Taiwanese suggested retail price is $10 cheaper than the price of the HTC Salsa in India.

This is the second Facebook-centric phone launched by HTC on the market, after HTC ChaCha was released a few days ago.

The number of Facebook users in Taiwan totals nine million, of which 6.3 million are active users who eventually will be the potential buyers for the Salsa,” said Jack Tong, vice president of HTC Asia Pacific, at launch.

HTC intended to offer Facebook addicts the possibility to choose one of the both worlds, either a full traditional QWERTY keyboard, or a simple capacitive touchscreen with virtual keyboard.

HTC Salsa and HTC ChaCha appeared for the first time in February at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona.

Both were touted as the world's first Facebook phone, though UK-based handset manufacturer INQ already announced the first phone manufactured in close collaboration with Facebook, INQ Touch Cloud and Cloud Q.

The Salsa comes with a medium-sized 3.4-inch capacitive multi-touch screen and virtual QWERTY keyboard on board.

As expected, HTC Salsa is equipped with an 800 Mhz CPU, just like its HTC ChaCha twin brother.

According to HTC, the Salsa will be delivered with Android 2.3 Gingerbread out-of-the-box, although it mentioned that it might be powered by Android 2.4 back in February.

Other highlights of the smartphone include 512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM, microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB), as well as a 5-megapixel main camera and a secondary VGA front-facing camera for video calls.