EXCLUSIVE – The HTC First Facebook Phone Comes Up Last

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The HTC First Facebook Phone Comes Up Last

I watched the Facebook Press Conference during which Facebook Home and the HTC First Android Phone with Facebook Home launched two weeks ago with a bit of amusement. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but my amusement really wasn’t just about my lack of being a Facebook fanatic at play; the idea of Facebook being my welcome screen and launcher just didn’t seem like something I would ever want. Facebook Home takes one means of connection and makes it central to my entire mobile experience. Having it on a dedicated Facebook phone means that I would need to go THROUGH Facebook to get to my other apps and services. It means I would basically need to give over a huge portion of my mobile life to Facebook, and that simply didn’t interest me.

Apparently I’m not alone.

To say that sales of the HTC First Facebook phone have been bad would be generous. A more appropriate word to describe interest in the HTC First with Facebook Home would be “abysmal”.

That’s the word an industry insider used when sharing with me the pre-order and first weekend sales numbers of the first phone built specifically for Facebook Home. How bad were the sales numbers? Let’s put it this way – less than 500 units on the East Coast. That’s not 500 thousand units, or 500 units an hour; that’s not even 500 units per store. No, my source told me that the TOTAL number of presale and first weekend handset sales on the East Coast was a TOTAL of less than just 500 units.

I cannot begin to imagine what stock AT&T is currently holding of the device, but I have a pretty good sense that the phone which is currently $99 on contract will be dropping down to $49 or even 1¢ in a matter of weeks.

The bottom line is this — sales of the HTC First with Facebook Home were basically non-existent.

In contrast, I don’t know what pre-orders for the HTC One look like, but I have a review sample and it is fantastic!!

The HTC First Facebook Phone Comes Up Last
And it isn’t just the HTC First Android phone with Facebook Home that’s having an issue. If you look at the Play Market and current ratings of the Facebook Home application that is now available for download to a variety of devices, you’ll see that it has a one star rating. I’ll admit to putting Home on my HTC One X, and I think the one star rating is actually generous.

That means the HTC First Android Phone with Facebook Home is a complete flop and, at least thus far, so is the Facebook Home app.

I’m not surprised in the least by any of this; are you? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

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About the Author

Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. Dan is married to Raina Goldberg who is also an avid user of Apple products. They live in New Jersey with their golden doodle Nava.

2 Comments on "EXCLUSIVE – The HTC First Facebook Phone Comes Up Last"

  1. Mitchell Oke | April 17, 2013 at 1:47 am |

    The only feature that interested me from their whole presenation was the Chat Heads feature. I think it’s a really good idea, and can’t wait for Chomp or some other developer to implement something similar in their SMS app.

  2. That is exactly the experience I am having with Facebook Home on the Galaxy SIII … I hate having to go THROUGH Facebook to do anything, especially since I’ve been using the Galaxy as my MP3 player in the car and Home messes with Amazon MP3 displaying lock screen controls … sometimes they show up, other times not. A whole phone based on that? No thanks!

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