At first, Facebook considered building its own phone. However, such an action seemed unnecessary, with so many willing partners such as Samsung, HTC, and Acer all looking for a way to diversify themselves from their Android dependence. Instead, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) illustrated an intriguing pathway to more relevance in the mobile world that Facebook could easily lean on after testing more small-scale ways of becoming the center of the mobile experience.
The great Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) fork of 2011
In September 2011, Amazon took the wraps off its Kindle Fire tablet. The eye-opener for many was the price: starting at just $199, versus the iPad’s $499 starting price. Yet price is easily copied when you have a competitor more concerned with market adoption than with hardware profits. By the next summer, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) had released its own Nexus 7 at the $199 price point.
Instead, what was remarkable about the Kindle Fire was that Amazon had pulled off a tremendous feat and managed to remove all traces of Google from Android, the operating system it had created. The company had “forked” Android and created a separate version. The upshot was that Amazon could put all of its own services on the device, such as its own App and music store. The downside is that it lost access to certain key applications from Google, such as Maps.
Does this look like Android to you?
The key idea was that Amazon showed a way to make another company the strong center of Android. Companies such as Samsung, which layer on their fair share of tweaks to Android, didn’t follow Amazon, because losing access to the Android app store and other applications such as Maps is too big a risk — not to mention the frayed relationship it’d cause with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). Yet for Facebook, the company could now take a measured approach that allows it to first embrace Android, and then determine its own path later.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Home: This is just a test
The basic idea is that Facebook Home is just merely an interface layer on top of Android. It sits somewhere between interface adjustments found on Android phones like Samsung’s TouchWiz or HTC’s Sense and a full-blown fork of Android found on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s Fire devices.
There’s really no reason for Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) to go all in with its own phones when it can test out riding on top of Android. A key advantage here is that Android is already the most popular mobile operating system; it’s a lot easier to get existing Facebook users to download a layer for the phone they already own rather than buying a brand-new one centered on Facebook. This essentially gives Facebook a large sandbox in which to begin getting traction with almost no risk to the company. If Facebook Home fails to attract broad interest, it’s back to Plan B with mobile. However, in the meantime, the company didn’t go through the tremendous efforts of forking Android and the tremendous development effort that would require for a first-class phone experience.
If Facebook Home is succeeding, then Facebook can pour more resources into the project and expand its influence. At a logical extreme, it could follow the path of Amazon and build out its own Android phone that emphasized its own services. However, Facebook now has key options of either being able to work within Android to build out its influence or take the full measure to be at the center of the mobile experience.
This is really a no-lose situation for the company, and in the meantime it gets to play “frenemy” by riding atop Android while it evaluates its next steps. It could all lead to nothing, but it’s really a low-risk, genius way of attacking Facebook’s greatest weakness.
