Facebook denies to launch branded phones with HTC

Facebook has no plans to launch Facebook-branded phones with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, it said on Thursday, following reports that it planned to launch an official tie-up next month.

"This is really just another example of a manufacturer who has taken our public APIs (application programming interfaces) and integrated them into their device in an interesting way," said Dan Rose, head of business development at Facebook.

London business newspaper City AM had reported that HTC would unveil two new Facebook-branded mobile phones at next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in a story that was widely picked up in other media.

"The rumours around there being something more to this HTC device are overblown," Rose told journalists at a company event in London. Asked whether the device would be Facebook-branded, he answered: "No."

Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users per month access the social network on mobile devices.

HTC was the manufacturer of the first Google-branded phone, the Nexus One.