Facebook hires Apple engineers to make its own phone

After Google, which recently closed the deal with Motorola, now Facebook is trying to get into the hardware game.

According to a New York Times report, Facebook is planning to come up with its own smartphone by next year. "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," reports The New York Times.

Also, Facebook has hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone and iPad, the employees spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Reportedly, this would be Facebook's third attempt at building a smartphone. In 2010, the blog TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working on a smartphone. But, the project tumbled after Facebook realised the difficulties involved, said people who had worked on the project.

Following this, AllThingsD reported last year that Facebook had joined with HTC to create a smartphone, code-named "Buffy," which is said to be still in the works.

An engineer, who formerly worked on the Apple iPhone, said he had met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, who then asked him questions about the inner workings of smartphones. Mark asked about technical details including the types of chips used in smartphones, said the enginner.

However, Facebook neither denied nor confirmed that a project to build a smartphone existed. It rather pointed to a statement that it gave to AllThingsD last year, "We're working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers."

According to a Facebook employee, "Mark is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms," as reported by NYT.

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