Is Facebook Making A Smart Phone?

If you are in the market for a new smart phone right now then you may want to wait a while. At least long enough to see if the rumors are true and Facebook really is putting out a phone of its very own. Nick Bilton, a reporter over at The New York Times, published a piece citing unnamed sources that are discussing the intentions of the newly IPOed company to move into mobile hardware.

Apparently it is all coming down to who the company is hiring. According to the article the company is bringing on mobile hardware engineers in a big way, ones with very specific skills, "The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said." So who knows the phone may be quite similar to the iPhone. For now the project is being called Buffy.

The only real question is what can a Facebook phone offer to the end users who would buy it that an iPhone, an Android phone, a Windows phone or even a Blackberry can't already give them? After all Facebooks only offering is already free on all of the major platforms and given the way the company makes its money, ad, won't be something most of us want on our phones.

If all goes according to plan the company is hoping to get its new phone offering out into the market place by sometime in 2013. At the current moment there is no word on carriers, or whether or not they will try to pull an iPhone and only list on one carrier for the launch, though it is unlikely to be a competitive market strategy. After all any new phone that enters the market has a mountain of competitors to climb over in order to get into your pocket.

Article by Katie Gatto