Zuckerberg Bullish on the Phone, Just Not on Building One

We’ve known that Facebook was working on its own phone. Project Buffy, as it is called internally, has been in the works — on and off — for some time. But on Facebook’s second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg gave indication that while mobile is a huge priority, building hardware internally isn’t for Facebook.

It “really wouldn’t make much sense for us to do,” Zuckerberg said, instead playing up what Facebook has poured itself into over the past few months: Encouraging third-party developers to build applications into the Facebook network, and then accessing them on phones.

Moreover, Zuckerberg stressed the recent announcement of Facebook integration into iOS and OSX, a partnership with Apple that has been some time coming.

It’s the first time the company has directly addressed the “are you building a phone?” question in public. We know that the project has had its ups and downs, but as far as we could tell, the project has slowly chugged along.

This may have changed, however, as main proponent CTO Bret Taylor took off for greener pastures just a few weeks ago.

Is Zuck wagging the dog, or has Facebook really slain Buffy?