Tech

Why Mark Zuckerberg does not want to make a Facebook phone

Jennifer White Contributor
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Mark Zuckerberg could probably dominate the smartphone market, but as he put it, “who cares?”

Facebook’s user base is so enormous, he said, that even if 10 million people bought a Facebook phone, that figure would only account for about 1 percent of all Facebook users.

Zuckerberg pointed out that Facebook’s strategy has been to piggyback on mobile access from other smartphone providers. The majority of Facebook users are now accessing the social media site via smartphone or tablet, instead of a traditional computer.

The social media juggernaut’s overall fourth-quarter revenue was $1.6 billion, compared to $1.1 billion just a year ago. Additionally, Facebook’s mobile revenue has shot up from 0 to 23 percent in a matter of just a year.

“Facebook is a mobile company,” Zuckerberg said in a call with Wall Street analysts, “It just prefers to achieve business success by riding on  other companies’ phones, rather than getting involved in the costly, fast-changing world of handset manufacturing itself.”

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