Facebook refutes phone release rumors

Yesterday, Michael Arrington with TechCrunch, citing its sources, published information about Facebook's plans to release its own mobile phone, following the example of Google and the Nexus One.

According to available information, this project is at an early stage, even most Facebook employees do not know about it. At least two Facebook programmers are participating in the development: Joe Hewitt (one of Firefox developers, author of the Facebook iPhone application) and Matthew Papakipos (former head of HTML 5 Open Web Platform at Google, author of more than 20 patents on processor architecture, head of Google Chrome OS until June of this year, after which he switched to work on Facebook).

Facebook hastened to refuteinformation about the release of their own phone and said that these people are working on the integration of Facebook and the “social” phone INQ1 , which is usually called Facebook Phone inside Facebook.

According to Michael Arrington, the denial of secret plans is quite logical, because the project is at an early stage, there may still be more than a year before the release and a lot of things can happen, at the same time Facebook is working closely with Apple and Google and does not want to spoil relations with them.

Despite its fantastic nature, the idea of ​​a Facebook phone looks very attractive. Calls to friends from your Facebook contacts book, not your phone book. Subsidized phone costing up to $ 50 with paying bills via Facebook Credits and so on.

One way or another, it’s very clear that Facebook is establishing contacts with mobile phone manufacturers and mobile operators. Some analysts say that Facebook could well work with some major manufacturer like Samsung or HTC to develop its own version of Android, tightly integrated with Facebook services, and release such a phone under its own brand. It is logical if they entered into an exclusive with one of the operators, like the iPhone with AT & T.