Facebook penetrates cellphone market

Facebook is working with HTC to build mobile devices with a “social operating system,” the long-rumored “Facebook Phone” project that the social networking giant has never officially acknowledged, the specialized website AllThingsDigital reports.

After years of considering how to best get into the phone business, Facebook has tapped Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to build a smartphone that has the social network integrated at the core of its being.

Code-named “Buffy,” after the television vampire slayer, the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a platform for applications, according to sources familiar with the project.

The mobile devices themselves are still a ways from hitting the market, potentially as long as 12 to 18 months.

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