{"id":74693,"date":"2013-04-04T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T07:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=74693"},"modified":"2013-04-04T09:17:53","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T07:17:53","slug":"facebooks-android-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/smartphones\/74693-facebooks-android-plans.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook’s Android plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook<\/a> unveils its “home” on the Android<\/a> smartphone Thursday, a move expected to tie the leading social network’s services tightly into mobile software.<\/p>\n

Invitations to a press event at Facebook’s main campus in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park rekindled talk of a “Facebook phone,” but analysts say the social network wants to spread roots across the Android platform.<\/p>\n

Facebook’s invitation says only: “Come See Our New Home On Android.”<\/p>\n

Technology news site TechCrunch predicted the announcement would be a modified version of Android with “deep native Facebook functionality” on a phone made by Taiwan’s HTC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Android, the free mobile operating system from Google<\/a>, accounted for 51.2 percent of US smartphone sales in the three-month period ending in February, according to freshly-released survey results from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.<\/p>\n

Android added 5.9 percentage points from a year earlier, while Apple’s share fell 3.5 points to 43.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Windows Phone<\/a>, boosted by the new operating system introduced last year from Microsoft<\/a>, increased its share to 4.1 percent.<\/p>\n

Facebook has made a priority of following its more than one billion members onto smartphones and tablet computers, tailoring services and money-making ads for mobile devices.<\/p>\n

“It is really clear from the stats and my own personal intuition that a lot of energy in the ecosystem is going to mobile, not desktop (computers),” Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> said in September.<\/p>\n

“That is the future.”<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg rejected suggestions that Facebook would make its own smartphone, adamant that the company had no intention of stepping into the fiercely competitive handset hardware arena.<\/p>\n

“Apple, Google, everyone builds phones — we are going in the opposite direction,” Zuckerberg said at the time.<\/p>\n

“We want to build a system deeply integrated in every device people want to use.”<\/p>\n

HTC forming an alliance with Facebook makes sense since the handset maker could capitalize on the social network’s marketing power in an Android arena dominated by Samsung<\/a>, according to Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It is not so much a Facebook phone as imagined by Zuckerberg as it is a lifeline for HTC, which needs a champion device and got Facebook to back it,” Enderle said.<\/p>\n

“The market has been gravitating toward Samsung,” the analyst continued. “This device is to take the emphasis back to HTC and provide them with a flagship phone that users can get excited about.”<\/p>\n

If Facebook had been eager to build its own phone, it could have reached out to close partner Microsoft, which owns a small stake in the social network, Enderle reasoned.<\/p>\n

A feature of Windows mobile software is integration with Facebook.<\/p>\n

HTC is among the electronics companies that make Windows-powered smartphones, increasing likelihood that a Facebook-centric handset features a tie into the software titan’s Bing Internet search engine.<\/p>\n

A Facebook-focused phone’s goal would be to make it intuitive to shop, search, post or do other tasks using the social network’s services.<\/p>\n

“You will see a phone laid out to address the many ways that you can get into Facebook,” Enderle said.<\/p>\n

“A main page with a Facebook feel and your news feed nicely displayed, and optimized to allow you to live in Facebook much like you live in iTunes<\/a> when you are on the iPhone<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

If reports are correct, the device will help Facebook more easily connect with mobile users, and — importantly — deliver more ads in the fast-growing segment.<\/p>\n

The research firm eMarketer<\/a> said US mobile advertising spending grew 178 percent last year to $4.11 billion, a market that nearly tripled last year.<\/p>\n

Google took more than half of those revenues, but Facebook’s share in growing: eMarketer said the social network accounted for 9.5 percent of mobile ad revenues in 2012 and is expected to take 13.2 percent this year.<\/p>\n

In the mobile display market, however, Facebook is on top, projected to grab nearly $3 in $10 this year, the research firm said.<\/p>\n

More Facebook articles<\/h3>\n

Facebook smartphone on the way?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Samsung Galaxy S4 SA launch window emerges<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 vs BlackBerry Z10 vs Lumia 920<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

HTC One in SA: operators respond<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook unveils its “home” on the Android smartphone Thursday, a move expected to tie the leading social network’s services tightly into mobile software<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":74425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17934],"tags":[36,397,161],"class_list":["post-74693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smartphones","tag-active","tag-android","tag-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74695,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74693\/revisions\/74695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}