Facebook phones to be built by HTC?

We’ve all heard that the “official Facebook phone” was just rumor that has been dismissed by Mark Zuckerberg himself, but nobody has said that Facebook couldn’t license the brand out to phone manufacturers to make. In the latest rumors online, HTC will be unveiling two new Facebook smartphones at the Mobile World Congress next month. The phones will feature the social network’s color scheme and branding, with a modified version of Android that is built around Facebook as its core – news and notifications pushed to the homescreen and native support for Facebook Chat. One of the devices is said to sport a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but other than that, there hasn’t been any other details.

If this is turns out to be true, the HTC Facebook phones could get some buzz, considering how Facebook is the world’s largest social network and its branding on an HTC phone would do wonders for its popularity. But then again this might backfire since Facebook is already available as a free app on pretty much every mobile operating system out there (even on some feature phones), and people might not see the need to get a Facebook-dedicated phone. However, if marketed and priced right, the phone could find an audience with the younger generation who don’t care much about anything else but Facebook and wouldn’t mind a dedicated phone to get them through the day. What do you think?

Publisher‘s note: Maybe we should all stop calling “Facebook Phone” any phone that comes with Facebook preloaded in it.

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Facebook, HTC, mobile world congress, MWC, official, phone, social