Facebook has hired more than a half dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who were on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, to build the Facebook Phone, The New York Times reports.

Instead of posting job listings for the Facebook phone online, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team are recruiting employees for the phone by hand, according to the report. Zuckerberg is peppering former Apple engineers with very specific questions about the iPhone, too — including the types of chips used.

The Facebook phone project has been rebooted a number of times because the company only recently discovered it needed to bring in people with phone-making experience, according to the report. One Facebook employee told The New York Times that Facebook originally thought it could figure out hardware development on its own.

Here's the money quote from the story;

“Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” one Facebook employee said.

Facebook has quietly assembled all the important bits of a mobile phone. It just released its new camera application that uploads directly to Facebook, its own messenger service, and it's reported that Facebook is courting mobile web browser developer Opera.

Facebook also plans to launch its own app store. The Facebook Platform is already one of the most attractive platforms out there, and Facebook could easily migrate (or integrate) those existing developers into the mobile app store.

沪江英语快讯：最近风头正盛的Facebook又传出了聘请苹果工程师为其研制智能机的新闻。据纽约时报报道，Facebook已经聘用了超过6位曾从事iPhone研发的前苹果软件和硬件工程师，以及一位曾从事iPad开发工作的工程师。扎克伯格担心如果近期未能打造出一款手机，Facebook将只是其它移动平台上的一款应用。作为一家新上市的公司，Facebook必须找到新的营收来源；也担心在移动这一颇有前景的领域落后，研制自家智能手机只是一个开端。

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