Seems that we might have new competitor for iPhone and our beloved Samsung and other Android phones.. There could be fOS or FABoid or something like that coming soon. or Blackberries or blueberries could be become Face-berries or book-berries :-) or even Nokia could be Fokia.. Just kidding..
I am in lighter mood today so all this crap.. But there is some reality to this news and it does make sense from one angle...
FB is getting hit hard by their mobile strategy where they are felling little lonely.. lot or most of the users access their FB account thru their smart phones which are currently being controlled by apples, oranges, berries and goggles of the world.. Poor FB is left with free service on them without any revenue gain.. They can hardly show anything to users on these fruit ninja phones..
So here they come back.. armed with 16 Billion dollars in their bank account.. they go for investment cum shopping spree.. Off course, their senior leadership has to take bigger risks and make better futuristic strategies.. You never know.. they may hit jackpot or just blow off all the IPO money and relegate FB to Yahoo status.. problem is, that if they don't act now and act totally differently, they will be Yahoo in next 5-7 years any how (or may be faster)..
Some how I don't buy into all this crap of mobile issue.. I would rather work on making it more easy to use on mobile and even on tablets so users can more easily access and enjoy their tool. Also, they need to come up with something like Google's ad-sense platform where even user benefits if user creates content and they try to sell users targeted adds based on the content users have created.
But for now, If I could, I would be short on FB stock.. I may be wrong (many times I have been wrong, otherwise, I would have been writing blogs full time instead working for someone else)..
Enjoy the news or I should say rumor.. you never know it may change the face of the world again....
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_20728939/facebook-hoping-release-smartphone-by-next-year
Now the company has been going deeper into the process, by expanding the group working on “Buffy,” and exploring other smartphone projects, too, creating a team of seasoned hardware engineers who have built the devices before.
Meeting with chief
One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said; Zuckerberg asked about intricate details, including the types of chips used, he said. Another former Apple hardware engineer was recruited by a Facebook executive and was told about the company’s hardware explorations. When asked Friday, Facebook did not deny or confirm that a project to build a smartphone existed, but pointed to a previous statement it gave to AllThingsD last year that said in part, “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers and application developers.”
For Facebook, the motivation is clear: As a newly public company, it must find new sources of revenue, and it fears being left behind in mobile, one of the most promising areas for growth. “Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” a Facebook employee said.
Facebook is going to great lengths to keep the phone project a secret, specifically not posting job listings on the company’s job website, but instead going door-to-door to find the right talent for the project.
But can a company that is wired as a social network learn how to build hardware? Mixing the cultures of hardware and software designers is akin to mixing oil and water. With the rare exception of Apple, other phone makers aren’t very good at this.
The biggest names in consumer electronics have struggled with phone hardware. Hewlett-Packard tried and failed. So did Dell. Sony has never done very well making phones.
“Building isn’t something you can just jump into,” explained Hugo Fiennes, a former Apple hardware manager for the first four iPhones who has since left Apple and is starting a new hardware company, Electric Imp. “You change the smallest thing on a smartphone and you can completely change how all the antennas work. You don’t learn this unless you’ve been doing it for a while.”
He added, “Going into the phone business is incredibly complex.”
Facebook also faces hurdles, often of its own making, on mobile. Twitter, for example, is fully integrated into the Apple iPhone and allows people to seamlessly send Twitter messages with photos or article links. Facebook, which has had a contentious relationship with Apple, is still not integrated into iOS.
One Facebook employee said the phone project had been rebooted several times because Facebook originally thought it could figure out hardware on its own. The company has since learned that it needed to bring in people with previous phonemaking experience, several people said. So it is hiring hardware engineers to work with a phone manufacturer and design the shape, style and inner workings of a Facebook phone.
Easy market entry?
Despite the difficulties, Facebook seems well positioned in certain ways to enter the smartphone market. It already has an entire operating system complete with messaging, calendar, contacts and video, and an immense app store is on its way, with thousands of highly popular apps. There’s also that billion-dollar camera app, in the form of Instagram. If Facebook fails with its own team of engineers, it could buy a smartphone maker. The company took in $16 billion from its bumpy IPO. It could easily scoop up an infirm company like Research In Motion, which is valued at less than $6 billion, and drop a beautifully designed Facebook operating system on top of RIM’s phones. HTC is upset with Google for buying Motorola, which is worth about $11.8 billion and becoming cheaper by the day. Facebook would not necessarily challenge Apple if it enters the smartphone marketplace. Instead, it could be Facebook vs. Google, which makes the Android operating system, with both companies going after a huge number of buyers of lowerpriced smartphones.
For Facebook, the motivation is clear: It must find new sources of revenue, and it fears being left behind in mobi le .
I am in lighter mood today so all this crap.. But there is some reality to this news and it does make sense from one angle...
FB is getting hit hard by their mobile strategy where they are felling little lonely.. lot or most of the users access their FB account thru their smart phones which are currently being controlled by apples, oranges, berries and goggles of the world.. Poor FB is left with free service on them without any revenue gain.. They can hardly show anything to users on these fruit ninja phones..
So here they come back.. armed with 16 Billion dollars in their bank account.. they go for investment cum shopping spree.. Off course, their senior leadership has to take bigger risks and make better futuristic strategies.. You never know.. they may hit jackpot or just blow off all the IPO money and relegate FB to Yahoo status.. problem is, that if they don't act now and act totally differently, they will be Yahoo in next 5-7 years any how (or may be faster)..
Some how I don't buy into all this crap of mobile issue.. I would rather work on making it more easy to use on mobile and even on tablets so users can more easily access and enjoy their tool. Also, they need to come up with something like Google's ad-sense platform where even user benefits if user creates content and they try to sell users targeted adds based on the content users have created.
But for now, If I could, I would be short on FB stock.. I may be wrong (many times I have been wrong, otherwise, I would have been writing blogs full time instead working for someone else)..
Enjoy the news or I should say rumor.. you never know it may change the face of the world again....
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_20728939/facebook-hoping-release-smartphone-by-next-year
HIGH-TECH CROSSOVER
Facebook may revive smartphone
Social network has hired former iPhone engineers as it explores future in hardware, sources say
By Nick Bilton
New York Times
Can a software company build its own smartphone? We may well find out soon.
In the past week, Google completed its acquisition of the hardware maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which could lead to the search giant making its own smartphone. And another software titan might be getting into the hardware game as well: Facebook.
Employees of Facebook and several engineers who have been sought out by recruiters there, as well as people briefed on Facebook’s plans, say the company hopes to release its own smartphone by next year. These people spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their employment or relationships with Facebook.
The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.
This would be Facebook’s third effort at building a smartphone, said one person briefed on the plans and one who was recruited. In 2010, the blog TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working on a smartphone. The project crumbled after the company realized the difficulties involved, according to people who had worked on it. The website AllThingsD reported last year that Facebook and HTC had entered a partnership to create a smartphone, code-named “Buffy,” which is still in the works.
Facebook may revive smartphone
Social network has hired former iPhone engineers as it explores future in hardware, sources say
By Nick Bilton
New York Times
Can a software company build its own smartphone? We may well find out soon.
In the past week, Google completed its acquisition of the hardware maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which could lead to the search giant making its own smartphone. And another software titan might be getting into the hardware game as well: Facebook.
Employees of Facebook and several engineers who have been sought out by recruiters there, as well as people briefed on Facebook’s plans, say the company hopes to release its own smartphone by next year. These people spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their employment or relationships with Facebook.
The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.
This would be Facebook’s third effort at building a smartphone, said one person briefed on the plans and one who was recruited. In 2010, the blog TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working on a smartphone. The project crumbled after the company realized the difficulties involved, according to people who had worked on it. The website AllThingsD reported last year that Facebook and HTC had entered a partnership to create a smartphone, code-named “Buffy,” which is still in the works.
Now the company has been going deeper into the process, by expanding the group working on “Buffy,” and exploring other smartphone projects, too, creating a team of seasoned hardware engineers who have built the devices before.
Meeting with chief
One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said; Zuckerberg asked about intricate details, including the types of chips used, he said. Another former Apple hardware engineer was recruited by a Facebook executive and was told about the company’s hardware explorations. When asked Friday, Facebook did not deny or confirm that a project to build a smartphone existed, but pointed to a previous statement it gave to AllThingsD last year that said in part, “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers and application developers.”
For Facebook, the motivation is clear: As a newly public company, it must find new sources of revenue, and it fears being left behind in mobile, one of the most promising areas for growth. “Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” a Facebook employee said.
Facebook is going to great lengths to keep the phone project a secret, specifically not posting job listings on the company’s job website, but instead going door-to-door to find the right talent for the project.
But can a company that is wired as a social network learn how to build hardware? Mixing the cultures of hardware and software designers is akin to mixing oil and water. With the rare exception of Apple, other phone makers aren’t very good at this.
The biggest names in consumer electronics have struggled with phone hardware. Hewlett-Packard tried and failed. So did Dell. Sony has never done very well making phones.
“Building isn’t something you can just jump into,” explained Hugo Fiennes, a former Apple hardware manager for the first four iPhones who has since left Apple and is starting a new hardware company, Electric Imp. “You change the smallest thing on a smartphone and you can completely change how all the antennas work. You don’t learn this unless you’ve been doing it for a while.”
He added, “Going into the phone business is incredibly complex.”
Facebook also faces hurdles, often of its own making, on mobile. Twitter, for example, is fully integrated into the Apple iPhone and allows people to seamlessly send Twitter messages with photos or article links. Facebook, which has had a contentious relationship with Apple, is still not integrated into iOS.
One Facebook employee said the phone project had been rebooted several times because Facebook originally thought it could figure out hardware on its own. The company has since learned that it needed to bring in people with previous phonemaking experience, several people said. So it is hiring hardware engineers to work with a phone manufacturer and design the shape, style and inner workings of a Facebook phone.
Easy market entry?
Despite the difficulties, Facebook seems well positioned in certain ways to enter the smartphone market. It already has an entire operating system complete with messaging, calendar, contacts and video, and an immense app store is on its way, with thousands of highly popular apps. There’s also that billion-dollar camera app, in the form of Instagram. If Facebook fails with its own team of engineers, it could buy a smartphone maker. The company took in $16 billion from its bumpy IPO. It could easily scoop up an infirm company like Research In Motion, which is valued at less than $6 billion, and drop a beautifully designed Facebook operating system on top of RIM’s phones. HTC is upset with Google for buying Motorola, which is worth about $11.8 billion and becoming cheaper by the day. Facebook would not necessarily challenge Apple if it enters the smartphone marketplace. Instead, it could be Facebook vs. Google, which makes the Android operating system, with both companies going after a huge number of buyers of lowerpriced smartphones.
For Facebook, the motivation is clear: It must find new sources of revenue, and it fears being left behind in mobi le .
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