The grand and glorious “Facebook Phone” experiment seems to be at an end, as CNET reports that AT&T has sold the last of its HTC First handsets and has no plans to order any more.
AT&T had earlier denied that any plans had been made to discontinue the handset, but there had seemed little doubt about the handset’s future after the carrier dropped the price from $99 to 99 cents. Even Facebook itself went as far as telling users that the front-end could be switched off …
According to AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega, the move to a 99-cent price tag helped spur sales of the Facebook phone, which struggled from the beginning to catch on with customers.
“We sold a bunch more when we lowered the price,” he said in an interview on Monday. “We sold everything we had on that.”
It’s unknown how many HTC First phones AT&T originally had in its inventory, and the company hasn’t released actual numbers.
Facebook, AT&T, and HTC debuted the device in a flashy event that also promoted the Facebook Home Android skin. The First was intended to be THE product that would show off Facebook’s new enhanced mobile presence, and AT&T had promised to back it as its marquee product for the season.
Many were skeptical from the first as to if the phone would catch on. Then, when AT&T cut the price of the phone to 99 cents in just a few short week after its debut, the writing was on the wall.
CNET contacted both Facebook and HTC for comment, but neither company has as yet responded.
