By: Aseem Gaurav on May 28, 2012
The tech blogsphere is abuzz with reports of social networking giant Facebook planning to launch its own smartphone by next year. Facebook, which became a publicly traded company on May 18, is in no mood to miss the opportunity to enter the mobile phone arena with a big bang.
A report on Sunday by The New York Times suggest that it has already employed over half a dozen Apple software and hardware engineers who have experience on the iPhone and iPad.
This would be the company’ third effort at building a smartphone, as earlier the plan didn’t work out as per the expectations given the difficulties involved in the project. But apparently Facebook has now realized that in order to make it big in this industry, it will need some industry-veterans who would develop the hardware, specially Apple alumni.
The project surely makes sense for the newly public company, which now needs to find new sources of revenue. The company in its IPO filing with the SEC earlier stated that the growth in the number of users accessing the social network from mobile devices actually poses a risk to its revenue model, which is heavily dependent on advertising.
“We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected,” the company had said.
The New York Times further reports that Facebook neither denies nor confirms about the news, but emphasized on its earlier statement that it would be "working across the entire mobile industry" including with hardware manufacturers, operators, OS providers and app developers.
Things seem to be going pretty fine for the company, which recently announced the launch of its own app store. It said the App Center will soon offer apps to be placed exclusively in Facebook’s store. Thus, in the current scenario, Facebook looks to be well positioned to enter the smartphone market.
However, one needs to remember that earlier many consumer electronics giants have burned their fingers in entering this arena like: Hewlett-Packard, Dell and even Sony has not done extremely well.
The tech blogsphere is abuzz with reports of social networking giant Facebook planning to launch its own smartphone by next year. Facebook, which became a publicly traded company on May 18, is in no mood to miss the opportunity to enter the mobile phone arena with a big bang.
A report on Sunday by The New York Times suggest that it has already employed over half a dozen Apple software and hardware engineers who have experience on the iPhone and iPad.
This would be the company’ third effort at building a smartphone, as earlier the plan didn’t work out as per the expectations given the difficulties involved in the project. But apparently Facebook has now realized that in order to make it big in this industry, it will need some industry-veterans who would develop the hardware, specially Apple alumni.
The project surely makes sense for the newly public company, which now needs to find new sources of revenue. The company in its IPO filing with the SEC earlier stated that the growth in the number of users accessing the social network from mobile devices actually poses a risk to its revenue model, which is heavily dependent on advertising.
“We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected,” the company had said.
The New York Times further reports that Facebook neither denies nor confirms about the news, but emphasized on its earlier statement that it would be "working across the entire mobile industry" including with hardware manufacturers, operators, OS providers and app developers.
Things seem to be going pretty fine for the company, which recently announced the launch of its own app store. It said the App Center will soon offer apps to be placed exclusively in Facebook’s store. Thus, in the current scenario, Facebook looks to be well positioned to enter the smartphone market.
However, one needs to remember that earlier many consumer electronics giants have burned their fingers in entering this arena like: Hewlett-Packard, Dell and even Sony has not done extremely well.
