Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acted quickly last year to dispel rumors of a Facebook-branded phone. The youthful Internet mogul stated simply, “Our whole strategy is not to build any specific device or integration or anything like that. Because we’re not trying to compete with Apple or the Droid or any other hardware manufacturer for that matter.” He’s now offered some more hints at what that means in a recorded message that played during HTC’s launch event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain yesterday.
“[We’ll] build more social features into the core of these devices that [HTC is] announcing today,” Zuckerberg said. “A lot has been made about a single Facebook phone, but this year you can expect to see dozens of phones with much deeper social integration than anything we’ve seen so far. Phones are inherently social devices, and the industry is just beginning to discover what is possible here.
“In other industries, like games, what we’ve done is the companies that build the best social products are the ones that are willing to just jump in and re-think what they’re making to be social from the ground up,” he continued. “HTC is doing that here, and that’s why they’re one of the first companies to build a device with deep social integration. We’re very happy with the direction HTC is taking in building Facebook into its HTC Sense [user interface] and we look forward to a lot more to come.”
So it’s not a Facebook phone… it’s an army of Facebook phones. Okay, not really. Facebook integration seems like a better way to describe it at this point. Building features for the social network into HTC Sense isn’t a distant step away from the Facebook apps we already see on mobile devices. Only time will tell how extensive this partnership is going to be, and how deeply Zuckerberg’s empire will penetrate the mobile market. You can check out a video of his announcement below, via electricpigtv.
