Facebook phone isn’t real says CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has again denied persistent rumours that the company plans to release its own smartphone.

During an earnings call, Zuckerberg described the idea of a Facebook phone as ‘not the right strategy’ and stressed that the company’s goal was to ‘make Facebook really good across all of the devices.’

His comments certainly make sense. Facebook probably has the spare money to embark on such a project but it would not come cheap as all the expertise would need to be brought in specially.

Why would Facebook make its own phone when it’s already the ‘go-to’ social networking app for most users on most mobile platforms?

‘People keep on asking if we’re going to build a phone. And we’re not going to build a phone...it’s not the right strategy for us,’ said Zuckerberg.

‘The big thing for us is we’ve one billion people using our products and we need to make Facebook really good across all of the devices that they use – and we’re going to keep on pushing to get kind of more integrated with the system,’ he added.

The company CEO went on to say that it now makes around 23 per cent of advertising revenue from the mobile space.

‘More people are starting to understand that mobile is a great opportunity for us,’ he said.

What would a Facebook phone offer that a current smartphone cannot? Not much, we reckon.You can already get a decent Facebook experience on the most popular mobile platforms.

Admittedly, the official Facebook apps on Android and Windows Phone could use a bit more refinement to make them more rewarding to use.

So perhaps it is best if Facebook concentrates its development time and effort around improving its existing software before dipping a toe into the highly competitive hardware space?