Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

Maybe "Building a mobile phone" is the new "Jump the Shark" for tech companies? And yes I'm giving a shout out Jon Hein.

Pretty much everyone needs to deal with a bank, so in a way it doesn't matter that they all have customer satisfaction issues, since people have to put up with it. If a bank gets really bad, people will switch (I think it'd have to get really bad, since switching seems overly painful for me personally - then again, I'm Canadian and our banks work a bit differently than in the states). If all the banks suck - or at least, as you say, the "big banks" who obviously have the biggest mind share - then people just sort of put up with it.

The same goes for airlines. If you're in the position where you're considering flying, pretty much all of your options suck anyway. By this, I mean that if I didn't fly home (a two hour flight), my next best option is to travel by train, which is comparable in price, takes 10x more of my time, and is (warning: unsourced memory of something I may have misread) actually les safe than flying. Flying is a hassle, but its typically an infrequent one, and it's a lot better than its alternatives.

Phones, however, are pretty much a dime a dozen, and the range of products is immense.

I've had a "dumb phone" for four years, and I don't really have a reason to upgrade. I can call, I can text, and if I really really need to I have web access on a browser that makes Lynx seem state of the art. This is enough for me.

For those who want a "smart phone" there are already great options:

- Blackberry is still a big name, and when I tried out my dads a few months ago, I liked it and considered buying one of my own. - Apple is now the big name and iPhone has huge mind share (I can't speak to its market share off the top of my head) and people who like Apple like it a lot. - Google is a trusted name, and they're marketing the hell out of Android. Their sales are pretty decent IIRC, and they're growing.

My point here is that there are already three large, established names that can compete "on name alone." The Facebook name, in a lot of circles, doesn't have a great reputation, particularly when talking about privacy.

I'm sure there are people out there who would buy a Facebook phone purely based on the name, but there are an awful lot who would do the opposite. Personally, when I saw the title "Facebook is Secretly Building a Phone," my first thought was "...and I would never buy it." That's based entirely on the Facebook name, based on my perception of the company.

I believe, and IANAL, in California non-competes are not enforceable anyway. Ref: Edwards vs. Arthur Andersen

Didn't everyone see this coming? Isn't like 30% of iPhone app usage in Facebook?

I don't buy this at all.

Apple has always been a hardware and software company with a very specific philosophy about user experience being everything. The digital music revolution gave Steve Jobs the opening to create the iPod that basically resurrected the company. That ply has been extended into phones and mobile computing.

Google is (from a revenue perspective) a search and advertising company. Their business model is predicated on how much you use the internet. So what Google is concerned with is everything between you and the internet. They've done Chrome, Android, etc to commoditize every link in that chain. Everything they do is about you using the internet easier, cheaper, in more places or more often.

Microsoft is about one thing and one thing only: selling Windows and Office licenses to enterprise and OEM customers. Nothing else matters. Look at the Kin: they bought Danger (with its once successful Sidekick) but then spent the better part of two years rewriting its OS as some Frankenstein version of Windows mobile. It arrived way too late and was dead before the first unit was sold (in large part due to the enormous data costs that Verizon saddled it with as they'd lost patience with the delay). Windows Phone 7 has the same goals.

Facebook is all about capturing and cultivating your relationships. They are a silo. They want to own that data because that data is their business and their entire value. Integration with everything else is about allowing other people to give Facebook more data.

What sense does a mobile platform make in that context? Absolutely none that I can see. How does it let them capture and control more data? Apple has had huge success with the iPhone because they have the industrial design, UI experience, supply chain management (which shouldn't be underestimated), iTunes (as much as many--including me--hate the application it is a near-monopoly in digital content) and retail channel.

For Facebook to succeed in the mobile space they would need most if not all of these things. It's a huge risk for relatively little gain and a small payoff. I can only thing that by leveraging a mobile platform of their own they could essentially lock out other platforms. The problem is that Facebook is usable with any Web browser.

I can't imagine Facebook doing any more than controlling the Facebook experience on all mobile platforms, an area they're still sadly lacking in (iPad app anyone?).

Basically this makes as much sense as Twitter making a mobile phone.