Mark Zuckerberg On Why A Facebook Phone Is A Stupid Idea

Facebook is a mobile company. That’s the message CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent to investors and anyone else who cared to listen to the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. He spent most of his...
Mark Zuckerberg On Why A Facebook Phone Is A Stupid Idea
Written by Chris Crum
  • Facebook is a mobile company. That’s the message CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent to investors and anyone else who cared to listen to the company’s earnings call on Wednesday.

    He spent most of his segment of the call talking about the strides the company has made in mobile, and the monetization opportunities that come along with them. The company did announce that its mobile daily active users surpassed web daily active users for the first time in the fourth quarter.

    “Today there’s no argument,” Zuckerberg proclaimed. “Facebook is a mobile company.”

    So, being a mobile company, some may wonder if Facebook may follow its peers into the mobile device business. After all, what’s good enough for Apple, Amazon and Google must be good enough for Facebook, right?

    I’m sure Zuck is very sorry to crush your dreams, but no, there won’t be a Facebook phone anytime soon. Here’s the quote (via CNET):

    “We’re not going to build a phone,” he said during the social network’s earnings call Wednesday. “It’s not the right strategy for us to build one integrated system…Let’s say we sell 10 million units — that would be 1 percent of users. Who cares for us?”

    Even as recently as this month, some thought Facebook would unveil a phone. Ahead of the event at which Graph Search was unveiled, rumors circulated that the company would make such an announcement. Obviously that didn’t happen.

    Of course it’s unlikely that Zuckerberg would say, “Yeah, we’re going to work on a Facebook phone at some point in the future,” (although he did hint at the search product in previous conversations), but what he said on Wednesday makes a great deal of sense, and it’s consistent with the message he’s conveyed in the past.

    On top of that, Facebook already has a great relationship with Apple right now, and despite not talking to Google, is able to get plenty of use out of Android, not to mention other platforms.

    Who really wants to buy a Facebook phone anyway?

    Image: Gawker

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