fb No Home for Facebook at AT&T: HTC First to be discontinued

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

No Home for Facebook at AT&T: HTC First to be discontinued

The HTC First, or ?Facebook phone? as many prefer to call it, is officially a flop. It certainly wasn?t a good sign when AT&T dropped the price of HTC?s First to $0.99 just one month after its debut, and now BGR has confirmed that HTC and Facebook?s little experiment is nearing its end. BGR has learned from a trusted source that sales of the HTC First have been shockingly bad. So bad, in fact, that AT&T has already decided to discontinue the phone.

Our source at AT&T has confirmed that the HTC First, which is the first smartphone to ship with Facebook Home pre-installed, will soon be discontinued and unsold inventory will be returned to HTC. How much unsold inventory is there? We don?t have an exact figure, but things aren?t looking good. According to our source, AT&T sold fewer than 15,000 units nationwide through last week when the phone?s price was slashed to $0.99.

For some perspective, BGR has been informed that sales of the HTC First have been even worse than HTC Chacha sales were back in 2011, when AT&T launched the ill-fated phone as the Status.

BGR recently reviewed Facebook Home and found it to be a promising product in need of some serious tweaking.

We?re told that AT&T sales representatives do not like Facebook Home or the First at all, and they are making little if any effort to sell the handset to customers. Right now iPhones andSamsung?s Galaxy S4 are the biggest sellers at AT&T by a substantial margin, our source said.

It is unclear exactly when the First will be pulled from store shelves. AT&T?s $0.99 sale is obviously intended to move as much inventory as possible, and then the phone will be discontinued as soon as HTC?s in-store display contract expires. HTC has paid to reserve display space in AT&T?s retail stores for a certain period of time and the phone cannot be pulled until that contract has run its course.

An HTC spokesman and a spokesperson from AT&T both declined to comment.

UPDATE: After initially declining to comment, AT&T contacted BGR via email with the following brief statement:

As mentioned previously, we do pricing promotions all the time and have made no decisions on future plans.

Source: bgr.com

[M_Lyons10]

Hm... The update is a bit confusing. So does that mean it has or has not been discontinued?

Honestly, I really don't see the point of Facebook Home. Why would you want a Phone OS that was linked to a single social network when you could get a Windows Phone for instance that could link to all of the major ones or another OS entirely that just had an app... I don't see the benefit honestly.

[George P Global Moderator]

I honestly don't think the HTC First is going to go anywhere and if the above is true I'm not surprised. If HTC can't do anything with the HTC One then they're pretty much done for IMO.

[siah1214]

That didn't take long.

[Dot Matrix]

Who didn't see this coming?

[freak180]

Figure this would of happen to WinRT first :laugh: Poor HTC...never catch a break. lol

[Ars Lykaion]

All things considered, the First is still a great piece of hardware running near-stock Android when Facebook Home is disabled. If the price bottoms out, I could see myself picking one up.

[Roger H. Veteran]

The "First" itself is a nice little backup phone if you need one. Good mid-range phone too... just disable Home and use stock android and you'll be golden!

I was thinking about getting one to replace my current backup, GT-I9100 (Samsung Galaxy S2). - Maybe be able to find them even cheaper now :p

[Sandor]

Honestly, I really don't see the point of Facebook Home.

Nor does anyone else it seems.

[jakem1]

The "First" itself is a nice little backup phone if you need one. Good mid-range phone too... just disable Home and use stock android and you'll be golden!

I was thinking about getting one to replace my current backup, GT-I9100 (Samsung Galaxy S2). - Maybe be able to find them even cheaper now :p

Backup phone? Is that something that Android users need? :p

[adrynalyne]

Backup phone? Is that something that Android users need? :p

Do WP or iOS users have magical phones that can't break when dropped?

[vcfan]

Do WP or iOS users have magical phones that can't break when dropped?

malware, freezing, bricking,etc...

[techbeck]

HTC's downfall was Facebook. Facebook should just be left as an addon/app and not rolled out with a phone. HTC makes good hardware, but bad decisions.

malware, freezing, bricking,etc...

Malware...never ran in to anyone who had malware on an android...freezing only seen this caused by what people do to their phones...bricking, not really an issue anymore.

Not saying these are not issues for some...but something I have never come acrossed personally.

Backup phone? Is that something that Android users need? :p

I always keep my last phone as a backup. I dont just go buy one for a backup tho. No need.

[Growled Member]

Put HTC and Facebook together on the same phone and you have a phone that screams don't buy me.

[adrynalyne]

malware, freezing, bricking,etc...

I said dropping. Do you have trouble reading?

[vcfan]

I said dropping. Do you have trouble reading?

im listing other reasons why youd need a backup, whereas you assumed he meant dropping the device. smh

[adrynalyne]

im listing other reasons why youd need a backup, whereas you assumed he meant dropping the device. smh

Funny that someone lists a backup phone for malware, and yet is a huge Windows user. Do you carry around a Mac for your malware issues?

Nobody would carry a backup phone for malware reasons.

Also, next time, quote who are you talking about. :rolleyes:

[(Spork)]

at my store we sold 0 none .... sadly remove the home crap and its a pretty good cheap phone

[Kondrath]

My store has sold two since launch. The Home interface is awful but it's quite a nice little phone with it disabled.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Backup phone? Is that something that Android users need? :p

Funny guy :/ - I generally take one of my backup phones to the beach or on a boat in the event it gets stolen or wet it's not a total loss.

At the bar and drop your nice phone and it's all smashed, you use your backup phone till you get a replacement or a new one.

I figured everyone had a beater phone lol... My spare backup phone is a Motorola C139 - It can't even do MMS! It says Cingular on it. That shows you how old it is but has saved me few times, most recently during Hurricane Sandy when we lost power for like 8 days. Battery backups don't last that long so I fired it up and was good for another 12hrs when mostly everyone else's smartphones were dead.

I have an 10,000mAh external portable battery charger that I used 3-4 times before it died as well so that's why I had to pick up the C139.