The Facebook Phone Is Coming Tuesday, TechCrunch Is Sort Of Reporting

Facebook is holding a press event at its headquarters on Tuesday.

The company hasn't said what it's announcing.

TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler says Facebook will finally announce a "Facebook phone."

Or, at least, Siegler kind of says that.

He writes:

Multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday.

Now for the caveats (and they’re important). It’s not entirely clear if this will be an actual piece of Facebook branded hardware or if they will simply use hardware from a phone maker to show off some sort of new Facebook OS for mobile. That is to say, it could very well be that the “Facebook Phone” is more about a Facebook OS running on a phone (or a few phones).

But then he writes:

Complicating matters is all the chatter that Facebook has both publicly and privately told partners such as Google and Apple that they had no intention to build their own phones. Again, maybe it’s semantics. Or maybe Facebook simply changed their minds. Or maybe this phone/OS isn’t meant to compete head-on with the iPhone and the Android phones that Google focuses on. Perhaps this is meant solely for emerging markets.

Then Siegler quotes something Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a TechCrunch event in September:

"It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us."

Finally, Siegler nearly walks back the entire thing:

Facebook is fairly good at keeping things close to the vest these days. And the truth is that there are a number of things the company could announce on Tuesday. But speculation that is something smaller, like a new app, doesn’t jibe with the multiple sources telling us this is going to be “a big deal."

So there you have it. Facebook will reveal a phone on Tuesday. Or maybe it won't.