San Francisco — British start-up cell-phone producer INQ Mobile on Thursday unveiled its two new smartphones that is bundled with the Google’s Android operating system with close Facebook incorporation, intended for consumers who want ready access to tools that let them stay in touch with friends on the fly and benefit from booming growth in social networking, according to a demo video taped by TechCrunch.
HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone maker, and INQ, a fully owned subsidiary of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., have cleverly carved itself a position in the crowded Cell phone market focusing solely on social networking focused models for youngsters, and later this month announced plans to unveil touchscreen mobiles, based on Google’s Android operating system, that feature greater Facebook integration on the handsets.
While neither manufacturer has branded it as a “Facebook phone,” HTC’s handset will have a committed button that takes users straight to Facebook, according to people familiar with the device.
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The manufacturers maintains that the new devices are an advancement from previous attempts to integrate social networks into phones, such as Motorola’s “Motoblur” interface or Vodafone’s “360” service.
Among the features of the new phone, dubbed as “INQ Cloud Touch,” the devices is tightly incorporated with Facebook’s services, and is accompanied with four Facebook-related buttons on the home screen, such as for wall postings and photos, friends integrated with contacts, and a prominently featured real-time News Feed of Facebook activity, Henri Moissinac, head of mobile business for Facebook, said in an interview.
Facebook, the most popular social network, is adopting handheld devices to reach the growing number of users who access its site via smartphones. Cooperation with handset makers may help Facebook garner added insight into how people and its service generate sales from the eventual placement of mobile ads.
Moissinac said: “Mobile now is a top primacy for the company. We believe every phone will become social, right from the moment you open the box.”
“For Facebook, it is about proving not only that they have a great platform on the PC, but also bringing Facebook to the faster-growing market of mobile handsets,” Will Stofega, a program director at IDC, said in an interview. “Consumers will pay a premium. They need Facebook.”
About 40 percent of the company’s more than 500 million users log onto Facebook from wireless devices.
The social networking giant is also collaborating on similar devices with other handset makers, Moissinac said, without naming partners.
Facebook engineers and London-based INQ have collaborated to create apps on phones for three years. The new INQ Cloud Touch features a 3.5-inch touch screen. INQ Cloud Q comes with a 2.6-inch screen and a Qwerty keyboard devices, blending Facebook Events with the phone’s calendar and placing Facebook features prominently on its home screen.
“Facebook is now much bigger than a social network,” said Frank Meehan, INQ’s chief executive. “It is a communications platform.” HTC is expected to unveil its device at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona next week. “It is one of HTC’s main campaign for this year,” a person familiar with its strategy said in a statement. HTC declined to comment.
Mobile is an increasingly important manipulator of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users per month access the social network on mobile devices.
The first model, INQ Cloud Touch, will go on sale in Britain in April with around 20 pound ($32.19) monthly contracts, said Ken Johnstone, head of products at INQ.
Johnstone said the choice of increasingly popular Google’s Android platform was a natural one for the company, and INQ aims to stand out among many similar models with its design and social networking features.
“It is a very capable platform and its evolving fast,” Johnstone said. “There are very many very average Android phones out there. We are trying to make other devices outdated, to stand out a little bit,” he said.
Users will only have to sign in to Facebook once, when setting up the device, allowing their credentials to be automatically updated by third-party applications.
The INQ Cloud phones, which will also integrate European music service Spotify. INQ is benefiting from its early move to make reasonably priced phones for connecting to social networks and the Internet in general — a move large handset makers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson are now following.
Making these mobile advancements is important as Facebook, which has more than 600 million active users around the world, works to expand in regions where it historically has not had a strong presence.
In the future, phones will be even more closely integrated with Facebook services, Moissinac said.
“This journey is just about to start,” Moissinac said.
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