Facebook: Reports of branded phone 'overblown'

Facebook has denied reports that it had partnered with Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC to release its own phones, calling the reports "overblown" in comments to Reuters. Reports of a possible partnership first surfaced in London-based business website City A.M. on Wednesday. The site claimed that the phones would be launched at an event at the Mobile World Congress, to be held February 14-17 in Barcelona.

While not saying that HTC was not developing some type of Facebook-enhanced phone, it would not be branded as such, the site's business development chief Dan Rose said. "This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs and integrated them into their device in an interesting way," he said. Regardless, mobile is an ever bigger portion of the social networking site's business, a quarter-billion users visit its mobile site every month.