U.S.-based social networking giant Facebook most likely won’t use the company’s F8 developers’ conference in May to announce a long-rumoured smartspeaker.
The news comes from a Bloomberg report citing “people familiar with the matter.”
According to Bloomberg’s sources, the company’s rumoured line of hardware products — including a connected speaker with built-in digital assistant and video chat capabilities — are currently undergoing review, in order to ensure that the devices respect renewed privacy concerns.
The same sources told Bloomberg that the hardware wasn’t planned to launch until later this fall, but that Facebook was hoping to unveil the products at the upcoming Facebook F8 conference on May 1st and May 2nd, 2018.
The delays come in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal that saw the data analytics company use Facebook’s platform to gather data from 50 million U.S. users.
Understandably, this might not be the best time for the embattled company to release a home product aimed at more tightly integrating Facebook into the lives of its users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for his company’s involvement in the scandal in a Facebook post on march 21st, 2018.
A Facebook spokesperson told MobileSyrup that the company declined to comment.
Source: Bloomberg
Update 28/03/2018 5:12pm ET: Story updated with additional reporting.
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