FB Cellphone: Facebook Phone on the Horizon?

Facebook Phone on the Horizon? Depends on FB Stock Prices?

Staff Report

PALO ALTO, CA - Is there a Facebook phone on the horizon? The answer varies depending who you ask. The New York Times recently ran a piece that examined the possibility of a FB Smartphone in the near future - perhaps as soon as next year.

The NY Times wrote:

Employees of Facebook and several engineers who have been sought out by recruiters there, as well as people briefed on Facebook’s plans, say the company hopes to release its own smartphone by next year. These people spoke only on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their employment or relationships with Facebook.

There are plenty out there who do not think a Facebook phone would be a good idea. A blogger at Slashgear recently talked about the no-no's of a FB phone. MEanwhile, Mikael Ricknäs of IGN news penned a piece at PC World about whether or not the world really needs a Facebook cellphone.

On Thursday, May 17, in federal court in San Jose, California, a class action lawsuit was filed against Facebook. The plaintiffs claim Facebook abusively tracked subscribers even after they logged out. The suit consolidates 21 lawsuits nationwide.

And last week, Facebook and its IPO underwriters found out they are being sued by investors who claimed they were misled in the purchase of the social network firm’s stock, especially when it came to valuation of the company and revenue predictions.The investors have said the members of a proposed class action lawsuit have lost more than $2.5 billion since the Facebook IPO last week, according to a complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court.

PC Magazine wrote:

Furthermore, as The Wall Street Journal points out, Facebook receives a disproportionate amount of revenue from Zynga and other game developers. That works just fine on the desktop. But on smartphones and tablets, Facebook hasn't yet managed to create a platform that will lure those developers into essentially residing within Facebook, rather than writing their own apps for iOS and Android and keeping all the revenue. One does not launch Facebook's mobile app to play games like "Mafia Wars," and it looks like this won't be the case for several years.

Reuters has a story about analysts predictions for Facebook stock - saying it could go as low as $10 to more accurately reflect the actual valuation of the social media company. 

They wrote, "Data from six brokerages modeled by StarMine forecast the company's estimated annualized earnings growth over the next 10 years at 10.8 percent. That's almost exactly the mean for the technology sector and far below the 24 percent growth rate implied by the current stock price."