Facebook had its own smartphone in development in 2010 and had made deals with processor maker Intel and provider AT&T. That is what the CEO who led the project at the time says. The smartphone never came, because the release would be too expensive.
The smartphone was necessary at the time, because Facebook had little to do with the mobile market and people at the social network believed that Facebook would benefit most from making its own hardware and software. The release would have cost a billion dollars and Facebook didn’t have the money before it went public, Chamath Palihapitiya, the chief executive who led the project, said in an interview with Recode.
The phone was designed by Yves Béhar, who is currently the CEO of Jawbone. Prototypes of the device still exist. Although Palihapitiya repeatedly says in the interview that it was a different smartphone, he does not say what was so different about the device. At the time, there were already rumors about the phone.
Later Android devices were released with a Facebook button, such as the HTC Chacha. The British INQ also came up with two Facebook models. In addition, Facebook bought WhatsApp and Instagram and released its own launcher for Android with Facebook Home. The vast majority of the 1.5 billion users now use the service via a telephone.