Facebook refutes phone release rumors

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

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

Facebook hurried to refute the information about the release of its own phone and said that the mentioned people are working on the integration of Facebook and the “social” phone INQ1 , which is 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, while Facebook works closely with Apple and Google and does not want to spoil relations with them.
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Despite its fantastic, the idea of ​​Facebook-phone looks very attractive. Calls to friends on the contact book from Facebook, but not on the phone book. Subsidized phone costing up to $ 50 with paying bills through Facebook Credits and so on.

One way or another, it’s completely clear that Facebook is forging links with mobile phone manufacturers and mobile phone operators. Some analysts have expressed that Facebook could well cooperate with some large manufacturer like Samsung or HTC to develop its own version of Android, closely integrated with Facebook services, and to release such a phone under its own brand. It would be logical if they concluded an exclusive with any of the operators, like an iPhone with AT & T.