Facebook is king of the social networks. It has already surpassed Google to become the online destination where users spend the majority of their time. Nearly a billion people around the world rely on Facebook to share photos, status updates, check-ins, and just stay connected with their networks of friends and family.

For many users Facebook has become synonymous with the Internet. With as much clout as Facebook already has, what would it gain from jumping into the highly competitive smartphone market?

An article by Nick Bilton in the New York Times quotes an unnamed Facebook employee explaining, "Mark [Zuckerberg] is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms."

Would that be so bad? Or, to rephrase--isn't that a worthwhile goal that other businesses would love to achieve?

My PCWorld peer Daniel Ionescu describes . "While the social network uses several kinds of targeted ads to make money, it has some 200 million users who use Facebook from their mobiles."