According to All Things D, Facebook has chosen HTC to manufacture their long rumored smart phone: "Code-named “Buffy,” after the television vampire slayer, the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources familiar with the project."
It's interesting news if true. Do you think there is a market and strong desire for a Facebook phone?
Via: allthingsd.com/20111121/the-facebook-phone-its-fin...
Discussion about
The long rumored Facebook Phone is allegedly real.
Hm... interesting. But is it really worth the money? I mean, theres already an app and everything just for facebook.
Is there a market for a Facebook phone? Yes. For people addicted to Facebook? For sure. For most other consumers? Not so much. I think people will be more likely to stick with other smartphones, which obviously can access Facebook just fine through a variety of methods. In my case, personally, I think a phone with Facebook pulsing through it's veins would get annoying and/or bothersome pretty fast; especially if, say, I didn't want to use Facebook for a bit or something. That's the problem and why I don't think there's a huge market for a device like this except for with extreme Facebook users, and even then it could be a stretch. I guess we'll see.
I don't think it will do so hot. Does anyone remember the HTC Status (Cha Cha overseas) on AT&T?
I didn't think so. :)
I didn't think so. :)
A device that is tightly integrated with Facebook and Facebook's services could be interesting to a number of people. However, I think this device could face some of the same challenges that the Kin faced. Will it so much better/easier for using Facebook that it is worth choosing? Will the carriers saddle it with a full data contract and thus severely limit the market for the device?
It has possibilities to be a successful niche device, but only if it avoids the pitfalls.
It has possibilities to be a successful niche device, but only if it avoids the pitfalls.
As far as I can see, I think a lot of us already have Facebook phones if you have the Facebook app installed. I'd be interested to see how much more integrated a Facebook phone would be with the Facebook platform. Maybe features like associating your Facebook account with the phone (similar to how Android users need to associate a gmail account), auto-uploading of photos, and breaking out the functions of the Facebook app so they can be launched individually (check-ins, photos, videos, etc).
