Zuckerberg Kills Rumors About Facebook Phone

Facebook founder & chief executive Mark Zuckerberg finally put an end to rumors about a Facebook phone, saying any such phone would not attract enough number of users to make the venture worthwhile.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 conference on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said that developing a Facebook handset would be a wrong strategy for the social-networking company.

In an interview at the San Francisco technology conference, Zuckerberg said, “The phone just does not make any sense.”

Ben Evans, an analyst with Enders, also believes that a Facbook phone would be disaster for the company. He said that a Facebook phone would divert the social-networking site’s attention from the more fundamental problems that the company is facing currently.

However, he promoted the significance of mobile in the Facebook’s strategy as investors are concerned about the company’s ability to generate money from its mobile users. The company pockets much of its revenue from its desktop version by publishing ads on the right-hand side of the site.

The young billionaire announced that the company’s new iOS application was reading twice as many feed stories as before, which indicates a boom in adverting revenue for the company in future.

He added Facebook committed a blunder by relying too heavily on HTML 5 for its applications rather than making use of native applications. He described native Android app as the third prong of the company’s mobile strategy after the iOS and mobile Web.

He also said that people should not expect anything to change with Instagram, which the company officially acquired just around a week ago.

Facebook is the world’s leading social-networking site, with more than 950 million users worldwide.