How Smart is Facebook Willing to Get about Mobile Phone?

It's been a few hours since we've heard something about Mark Zuckerberg; but, this is not about that acronym.  This story is about Facebook's potential to build a smart phone.  That's right, the social media star wants to broaden its horizons and fully enter the market.

Can Facebook just do that?  I mean, what does it take to be a smart phone 'maker'?  "Building isn't something you can just jump into," relays one Apple hardware manager.  "You change the smallest thing on a smart phone and you can completely change how all the antennas work.  You don't learn this unless you've been it for a while."

Recognizable brands have had trouble breaking into the market, Dell and Hewlett Packard being two.  But Zuckerberg likes to go big; 'complexities' may not be enough to stymie his interest in the endeavor.  As the NY Times' Nick Bilton points out, Facebook is well equipped to give this thing a good-ole-Harvard try.

So what kinds of goodies does Zuck have underneath Facebook's hood?  It has a complete operating system.  The system is stocked with calendar, messaging, video options, and more.  Furthermore, we're awaiting a hefty app store, one which will host that one very special, billion-dollar photo application.

Actually, we've heard word of Facebook making such attempts in the past.  Sources say previous endeavors were spoiled because the company could not wrap its head around the hardware aspect of the ordeal.  Zuckerberg's known for recruiting what he lacks in-house; sources report Facebook has and continues to hire additional hardware engineers.

As Bilton mentions, Facebook could recruit an entire smart phone company if it can't make things run smoothly in-house.  Research in Motion is valued at less than $6 billion.  Facebook could afford such shopping sprees.

Zuckerberg has a lot going on right now; but, that's the breaks when you have a public company serving over 900 million people worldwide.  We know what one company does can affect another.  If Facebook did issue a smart phone it would definitely raise the brows of people over at Google and Apple.

Apple probably wouldn't appreciate that Google and Facebook would be making smart phones.  Additionally, Google would have to swallow the fact that Facebook was attempting to do (yet again) something better than it.