Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Paul Sakuma
Why would I want to hand control of my phone to Facebook?
According to the rumour mill, Facebook is having another crack at building its own smartphone -- supposedly running a full Facebook operating system rather than simply a Facebook app. Apparently Facebook has snapped up a few ex-Apple engineers and hopes to launch its own phone next year, according to the New York Times.
Apart from being cheap, I'm not sure what a Facebook phone could do for me that any other smartphone couldn't do courtesy of the various Facebook apps. It's reminiscent of the argument around whether it makes sense for Apple to build an Apple Television or simply keep selling the cheap Apple TV media player which plugs into any television.
Regardless of the product, as a general rule hardware eventually becomes commoditised and the real money is in content and services. In theory the smart move for Facebook is to just keep making apps rather than getting caught up in a fight to the death between handset makers.
There's little money to be made in hardware, whether it's smartphones or televisions. But you don't just sell hardware to make money. You sell hardware to lock in customers and to give them easy access to your ecosystem. Apple's Apple TV media player and Amazon's Kindle e-book reader are textbook examples of this.
Unlike Amazon and Apple, Facebook doesn't actually sell you anything. You are the product, which Facebook sells to advertisers. So for Facebook the real value of its own smartphone would be greater insight into its users. To keep the new shareholders happy, Facebook needs to find a way to present us not only with more advertisements but with more targeted advertisements. Once it has access to everything we do with our phones, Facebook could examine every corner of our lives to see what makes us tick. This might sound like an Orwellian nightmare, but it's already been clearly established that people are happy to trade away their privacy.
It might make sense for Facebook to sell phones, but why would we want to buy one? For Amazon the Kindle is an easy sell because initially it was the only way to read Kindle e-books. Even with the rise of Kindle apps for touchscreen gadgets, I'd still say the Kindle offers the best user experience for reading e-books. For Apple the Apple Television is a harder sell because there are more convenient ways to access Apple content than to buy a whole new television from Apple.
So what about a Facebook phone? If Facebook can sell them really cheaply then price alone could be enough to guarantee its success. But they would have to be dirt cheap to fight off the iPhone and the Android hordes, not to mention Windows Phone 7 -- all of which already offer Facebook access. When it comes to smartphones I think buyers pay more attention to functionality than to the price tag, but opting for a Facebook phone will probably mean sacrificing functionality in other areas.
Meanwhile when it comes to dumbphones, people pay more attention to the price tag -- but then they're probably looking for something cheaper and dumber than a Facebook phone.
When you look at it this way, perhaps the Facebook phone could be a cheap smartphone for dumb people. Sounds harsh, but sadly they could be on a winner there.
What would it take for a Facebook phone to win you over?
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