Apple picker Facebook has something big up its sleeve that it plans to share with us on April 4th. In an invitation sent to the press, Facebook invites us to "come check out its new home on Android." It's not entirely clear what exactly the "new home" means, but it's possible the company will unveil an HTC phone with its own customized version of the long-speculated open source operating system.
If Bloomberg's July reports are to be believed, the project has been in the works for a long time and was originally supposed to be unveiled to the public as early as 2012, but the project was pushed back to give HTC time to unveil its other products. While Facebook and HTC's previous collaboration, on a joint HTC ChaCha phone, didn't see much success due to low interest in the product, 9to5Google reports that the two companies are hard at work on a campaign that "will focus on potential customers, not hardware or software." .
It remains to be seen how deep integration Facebook plans for its own platform, but we already know that Facebook has already started pushing updates to its Android app, outside of the Google Play store's own distribution mechanism, in order to test its new features on the platform.
Last summer, when speculation about a Facebook-HTC collaboration was at its peak, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook was not working with anyone on any hardware. "It wouldn't make any sense," he said at the time. Instead, he pointed to deeper integration into current mobile platforms, such as iOS6's built-in sharing. Since then, Facebook has expanded its services to include free Wi-Fi calling and mobile data, and the company also announced that it plans to offer free and discounted data to users who use the Facebook app on European carriers.
The "home" mentioned in the invite could also be a reference to the home screen, as according to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is working on an Android app that would display information from your Facebook account on the home screen. Facebook is said to want to increase the amount of time users spend on Facebook in this way. The app is said to debut on HTC devices, but it's possible that it could be available for other devices in the future.
On the surface, it looks like Facebook has a lot to bring to its own platform, and Amazon's new Kidle Fire model has shown that it's not just Google's Android that can be successful. Next week, we'll see if it's worth moving to Facebook's "new home."
And put it and Andrid in the... spy.
Google? Jn..