Will Facebook Home, a mobile experiment for its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, become a major threat to telecom operators?
The new application on Android, which will go live on Google’s Play store on April 12, replaces Google’s Android app launcher, and makes Facebook the first thing users see when they use their phones.
This is Facebook’s new mobile initiative to connect better with Facebook users since the social media powerhouse does not own an operating system. But it will pose risks to telecom operators, analysts warned.
The software may be available on Apple’s mobile platform and other OS platforms as well at a later stage. But there is no proper indication from Facebook.
“For carriers, the risk is that this puts Facebook’s communication services front and centre on the device and makes them easier to use and more integrated with the core experience on the device, which should make them easier to use than when they’re buried in an app, and should accelerate the shift from carrier services to over the top (OTT) services. It should be a big boost to Facebook Messenger and the associated voice and video services,” said Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum.
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