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Imagine if they’d stuck with developing their own phone, if they’d iterated, and poached talent, and kept at it. They’d have had (so far) over 9 years to make i
by roydivision 4y ago
Imagine if they’d stuck with developing their own phone, if they’d iterated, and poached talent, and kept at it. They’d have had (so far) over 9 years to make it work. They could have sold the hardware at cost, or even made a loss.
That would have been worth it to own part of the market. It’s not like they don’t have money.
- isthispermanent 4y agoBut would the ROI ever have outstripped the coast to end-around Android and iOS? And then, on top of that, would FB have been able to produce something good enough to convince buyers to use a FB phone despite privacy concerns? Seems like a big lift and the same challenge they'll face with VR and a bad privacy reputation. They're not just climbing the hardware/software/UX hill, they're also climbing the public opinion, regulation hill.
- naravara 4y agoMaking phones is extremely difficult. Even Google didn't do a great job of making a profit off its flagship, in-house line of Android phones despite them being the best Android experience available. Apple owns almost all the profit-share in the market and the rest is mostly coming from low-margin, commodity phones. Facebook doesn't need the data of price-conscious people willing to penny pinch to buy a cheap-o Facebook phone. They need to hoover up the data of iPhone users. That's where the valuable advertising bucks are.
- Apocryphon 4y agoFacebook couldn’t even make an Android launcher that people wanted to use.