HTC "Buffy" is the Real Facebook Phone

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For Facebook, mobile is the next frontier. The social network has already captured a market of almost a billion Internet users. But with the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, the company will need to ensure its future in the mobile industry, and Facebook has reportedly asked HTC to do a Facebook phone codenamed “Buffy.”

Facebook is developing a smartphone that will hopefully be able to drive a stake into its competitors’ hearts. The project, codenamed “Buffy,” after the TV series’ vampire slayer, is essentially an Android device, although Facebook is heavily tweaking the operating system and interface to integrate its own services.

Facebook also wants to build heavily on its own application platform and marketplace, and is pushing for better HTML5 integration, so that developers can create apps for the Facebook phone, according to sources cited by All Things D.

Facebook has reportedly partnered with HTC after also considering another potential partner, Samsung. The Buffy project won’t be releasing smartphones anytime soon, though, as Facebook’s mobile roadmap for this particular project is said to involve 12 to 18 months of development. But Facebook is not taking mobile lightly. With 350 million active mobile Facebook users, the company wants better control over the user experience and app platform, given that one of its biggest social network competitors, Google+, is being deeply integrated into Google’s own Android mobile operating system.

Facebook has declined to directly comment on the matter, although a spokesperson said that Facebook wants to bring the social network to as many mobile users as possible.

Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.

Meanwhile, HTC has developed Facebook-centric mobile phones before, such as the HTC Chacha, which has a dedicated button for sharing content on Facebook. However, Buffy will be different, in that the integration is much deeper — such as giving access to social activities and social connections in the mobile interface itself.

Smartphone image with Facebook logo is for reference only.