Facebook Phone: why are investors nervous?

There are lots of chatters around Facebook mobile phone project.  Facebook has recently picked up several engineers from Apple who worked on iPhone and iPad, and this is feeding rumor mill to get everyone talk about possibility of Facebook launching its own mobile phone.  It seems like most opinions are clustered around it being a bad idea, primarily because of Facebook has no experience dealing with building hardware.

Facebook Phone is seen as a risk
rather than opportunity by investors
for a good reason.

I agree.  As it was a risky idea 2 years ago, it still is very risky idea now.  I looked through my blog post from September 2010 that I wrote when I first heard of Facebook-branded mobile phone, and I still feel the same way.

Making compelling mobile phone is a difficult and expensive proposition.  It involves figuring out not just working with suppliers but understanding design and product cycles that are completely different from SaaS software release cycle.

There are many interesting opportunities that could open up if Facebook were to own their own platform.  Getting full access to all sensors on the phone and being able to drive new hardware features based on application idea are tempting.  But we have to remember that mobile is all about user experience.

Users are on Facebook because they can connect with people.  The main focus of Facebook should be making its platform stickier to all users while it figures out monetization model that can scale.