The talks of a Facebook phone are like day dreams of fanatic
addicts, who might have bought many Facebook shares in the IPO and are gone mad
after the valuations dropped. The share price of the stock is dropping consistently,
touching all time low almost on a daily basis.
The shares of the top social network fell by to $26 (as on
6/5/2012), which is a 32% drop from its initial public offering price of $38 on
May 18. Since its debut, the company has wiped off more than $25 billion in shareholder
value, which is almost equal to the market capitalization of Morgan Stanley,
the lead underwriter of Facebook's IPO.
The main concerns about Facebook include its inability to increase
revenue and make money from the growing mobile audience. Another problem that Facebook
faces is its reliance on advertising for a majority of its revenue. As people
move from desktops towards Smartphones and tablets, the advertising revenue may
dry up for Facebook. In fact many big ticket advertisers have withdrawn their advertisements
from the company’s site. For example in May 2012, General Motors pulled out of all
its paid advertising on the social network, after citing Facebook's unproven
track record and echoing potential concerns about the lack of evidence that
advertising on Facebook yielded strong returns on investment.
Despite all the bad news surrounding Facebook, there is
still hope for the company. The company is still the largest social networking
website. There are a lot of followers of the company. Facebook has recently
poached on a number of apple engineers, which is fuelling this speculation of a
Facebook branded smart phone.
Renowned designer, Michal Bonikowski has released images of
the Facebook phone, if ever Mark Zukerberg plans to launch it. The same
designer has previously released concepts for Windows Phone 7 featuring Nokia.
The main theme of the phone is blue. According to the designer,
the Facebook smartphone will sports a 4.2-inch screen, a 5 megapixel forward
facing camera to big up the chat element, an 8 megapixel camera around the back
to help you snap all that's around you, and the option of induction charging
via a dedicated dock so you don't have to worry about cables.
Well creating a new Facebook OS from ground up is a difficult
and costly proposition. Facebook can go the easy way and take a cue from Amazon
or Baidu. While Amazon has used the Android OS to create its Kindle Fire, the
final product has very resemblance to Android. Similarly in China Chinese search major Baidu offers
a custom spin of Android taking a Google Nexus S handset and replacing all Google's
services with that of Baidu. Well, only future will tell which way the wind
will blow for Facebook.
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