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Facebook is not developing its own mobile hardware, the social network giant has told Develop.
When asked whether there were any plans for a Facebook phone to help expand its website as a games service and take advantage of its enormous userbase, developer advocate Simon Cross said unequivocally “there is no Facebook phone”.
Facebook has been rumoured to be working on its own mobile hardware for a number of years, but Cross insisted that the company was focused on making the social network a hub for gaming on all mobile devices.
He said the company was looking to leverage its 500 million mobile users to support developers and games on both iOS and Android, and as previously announced had driven 170 million users to the App Store and Google play in July alone.
When asked whether Facebook was concerned about driving users away from the site’s own games to other devices, Cross said this simply wasn’t the case.
“I’m not sure we are,” he said.
“If you think about how a user uses the internet, they will use Facebook, and other websites with Facebook, whether or not that game is inside the Facebook Chrome. Facebook Connect, when we launched it four years ago, was about having Facebook inside other products. If you think about the mobile world now, basically it is exactly the same.
“We have over 500 million monthly mobile users and inside Facebook I’m seeing stories about games which I click on and I end up playing the game.
“And now that I’ve played the game I’m seeing what my friends are doing in the game. It’s exactly the same as it’s been on the web for years.”
