The WSJ is reporting that Facebook’s upcoming Android event will be a home screen — as in the first screen you see when you flip on your phone — dedicated to Facebook. It will “display content from users’ Facebook accounts on a smartphone’s home screen.”
Facebook is expected to first offer this feature to an HTC phone but hopes to eventually bring it to other Android phone makers. The WSJ says that Zuck’s ‘book has been working on “placement deals” with other phone makers. That means, more or less, that what Facebook will announce in April won’t be the Facebook phone.
So if it’s not a Facebook skin and if it is an Android home screen Facebook experience, does that mean Facebook is making an Android Facebook skin? Facebook’s goal with this heavy Facebook front page is to “make the app broadly available for all Android devices” to put Facebook first on Android smartphones. Sources tell the WSJ that it woud make the news feed and other Facebook-centric info viewable immediately.
If this report is true, it looks like Facebook would be working with Android phones instead of seeking to replace it. It would also mean that Android Facebook phones would be more deeply integrated than what Facebook has with Apple. Does this mean Facebook is siding with Android in the iPhone and Android wars? [WSJ]