British wireless carrier Everything Everywhere Limited, more commonly known as EE, confirmed the HTC First—also known as the Facebook phone—will not be making a debut in the United Kingdom according to Endgadget.com.
There were original reports saying all the pre-orders for the First had been cancelled. Endgadget received confirmation from EE, saying Facebook decided to hold off so improvements can be made to Facebook Home.
According to Endgadget, EE cited “customer feedback” as one of the major reasons the phone will not come to the UK.
The Facebook phone has done abysmally in the United States. The phone has gotten terrible reviews and there was even speculation AT&T was preparing to drop the First all together.
However, according to Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg is not going to give abandon the project. Although Facebook Home may be struggling, it is not completely dead. The amount of individuals using Facebook Home may be smaller than the company expected; however there are enough people to work on making the software suite more attractive and efficient for users.
A key trend that may help Facebook’s drive to succeed on the mobile platform is the growing amount of individuals using their smartphone as their dominant source for the Internet. With more people accessing the web on their handsets, more advertisers will gear their efforts toward the smartphone.
This may give Facebook more time to study and get a second chance at making a bigger mark in the mobile industry.
Therefore, the issue in London could be a stumbling block on a path to bigger things, or a foreshadowing of the social media company’s future mobile failures.
