Facebook denies smartphone rumours, but do we believe them?

Social networking site Facebook has today denied rumours that it is intending to take a shot at the smartphone market, after reports appeared in the media that it is secretly developing a smartphone.

The rumours started yesterday with technology website TechCrunch, which reported that Facebook was secretly developing smartphone software, and was looking for a third party partner for hardware development. Quoting a 'source close to the project', TechCrunch went on to suggest that Facebook wanted to "integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone", something it could only achieve by controlling the operating system; and that the company was concerned about the "increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms".

Denials began almost immediately, with Facebook saying categorically: “Facebook is not building a phone". The statement went on to say that while the company was working on various projects in the mobile arena, people had wrongly latched on to the Facebook phone idea as an easy soundbite, and  that "building phones is just not what we do".

Rumours persist, however. As CNET points out, Facebook would not be the first company to cleverly word a press statement, strongly implying that it isn't doing something which it later turns out to have been doing (yes, Google, we're looking at you). CNET's theory is that Facebook's denial revolves around 'building' a phone, which it could plausibly deny if it were only creating the software for a phone - and in fact when pressed on the suggestion that it is planning to bring a Facebook-branded phone to market, CNET says, Facebook's spokesperson had nothing to say.