Facebook to show off own smartphones

Facebook will show off two dedicated Facebook smartphones at next month’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, UK-based City AM Newspaper reports.

The handsets are reportedly being manufactured by Taiwan’s HTC.

The news report added that the phones will run on a tweaked version of Google’s Android operating system and will prominently display users’ Facebook messages and news feed on the home screen.

Facebook’s Joe Hewitt, who worked on the Firefox web browser, and Matthew Papakipos, a leading member of the Google Chrome browser team, are said to be behind the launch.

Facebook has however often denied that it will be developing its own handsets, and said it would rather be focusing on software applications and making its website work more efficiently on other companies’ handsets.

City AM reports that despite the denials, reports have continued to trickle out over the past six months that people at the company are working on a secret project to develop an Android-based smartphone for the company.

Samuel Dowuona