The cell phone market is very competitive with numerous companies bringing out new devices in what seems a daily recurrence. Now it seems we are going to have a new player coming to the market as it is claimed Facebook are working on a device.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is reporting in an article, that a source that has some knowledge of the project is claiming Facebook are working with another company to build the hardware. This is the same thing that all the other big players do.

According to the source when Google first announced they were working on a phone, Facebook started to become concerned with the increasing influence of the Android and iPhone platforms.

They were also worried that the Facebook apps for the platforms would not be enough to stave off the long term competitive threat. Facebook wants more control of the contacts list and other main functions of the device, which it can only manage if it has control of the operating system.

It is alleged that two high level Facebook staff Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos are working on the project, who both have operating system knowledge. Papakipos in particular was leading the Google Chrome OS project until he suddenly left and went to Facebook in June.

If we do ever see a Facebook phone what would it be like? And would it be aimed at the lower end of the cell phone market? We will just have to wait and see.

Let us know what you think.