Report: Facebook Quietly Planning to Build a Smartphone

According to The New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg and his social network could launch a smartphone that would compete with Apple’s (AAPL: 572.34, +10.05, +1.79%) iPhone and Google (GOOG: 599.05, +7.52, +1.27%) powered Android devices by next year.

The report did little to help Facebook’s shares, which tumbled to a new intraday low of $30.80 Tuesday morning.

Facebook has tried and failed in the past at creating a smartphone, but the company has shifted its strategy this time around to solicit advice from outsiders, the Times reported.

Still, it remains to be seen whether this third attempt at building a smartphone will succeed, particularly because of the difficulty of evolving from a predominantly software company to a hardware and software one.

Other big technology companies such as Dell (DELL: 12.76, +0.30, +2.37%) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: 22.75, +0.42, +1.88%) have been unsuccessful in this realm, but Facebook does have 800 million active users and photo-sharing app Instagram, which it recently bought for $1 billion.

Facebook, which raised a whopping $16 billion from its turbulent IPO, has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who helped that company build its blockbuster iPhone, the paper said.

The Facebook smartphone report comes just days after Google completed its $12.5 billion acquisition of hardware maker Motorola Mobility.

Facebook declined to comment on the story. However, the company directed the Times to a prior statement provided last year that said, “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers