Facebook Is Likely To Debut Its Own Android-Smartphone On April 4

Today Facebook invited members of the press to an event related to Android on April 4, and TechCrunch notes that Facebook will likely debut its long-rumored smartphone at the event. According to previous reports, the handset would be an HTC smartphone based on Facebook-modified version of Android OS.

If it is true, this move would make Facebook an Amazon-like competitor for Apple in the smartphone market, as Amazon has significantly modified Android for its own Kindle Fire tablets. The New York Times reported that last year that Facebook was hiring former Apple’s iPad and iPhone engineers to work on a "Facebook phone" project.

TechCrunch highlights one of the main reasons why the social networking giant would want to create its own smartphone device:

“With deeper control of a modified operating system would come huge opportunities to collect data on its users. Facebook knows that who you SMS and call are important indicators of who your closest friends are. Its own version of Android could give it that info, which could be used to refine everything from what content you’re shown in the news feed to which friends faces are used in ads you see”.