Social networking giant Facebook is holding a big press event this Tuesday, January 15th, and it seems there’s going to a big surprise for us. Rumors say the company is expanding its territories; analysts and tech gurus speculate a Facebook smartphone, a recent report last March claiming that Facebook hired Apple employees who recently worked on iPhone and iPad triggered the rumor mill.
Could this become a reality? Your very own Facebook smartphone? Alongside, the social networking giant was rumored to roll out its iOS Messenger on iPad this week.
It?s not entirely clear if this will be an actual piece of Facebook branded hardware or if they will simply use hardware from a phone maker to show off some sort of new Facebook OS for mobile. That is to say, it could very well be that the “Facebook Phone” is more about a Facebook OS running on a phone (or a few phones).
While the updates are categorized as rumors, it is unclear if Facebook rolls out its own flagship of devices. Facebook could use its own resources to come up with an OS, but it is also possible it will be flavored using Android. The price would be cheaper than iOS as a startup.
Alongside the smartphone rumor is the iOS Messenger app to roll out this week.
A fully fleshed-out Messenger for iPad, eventually including video chat, VoIP, and voice messages, could be another Facebook attempt at killing your home phone. The combination of cheap VoIP with Facebook?s social graph and distribution network could be enough to get people to cut back on their home phone plans and save their mobile minutes/data.
Recently, Facebook bought Instagram and in spite of the changes in the privacy options of the latter, Facebook could be prepping up for major revamps on its extended apps like Poke, and Instagram.
Let’s see how it goes this week.
Stay tune.
Source: TechCrunch
