Facebook Seeks to Be Mobile 'Home' of Android Users MENLO PARK, Calif. - Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Thursday that the company had developed new software, called Home, to showcase the social network on mobile devices using Google's Android operating system. "Today our phones are designed around apps, not people," Mr. Zuckerberg said at a news conference at Facebook's headquarters. We want to flip that around. Home converts the Facebook news feed into the home screen on the user's phone. Pictures take up most of the real estate, with each news feed entry scrolling by like a slide show. Messages and notifications pop up over the home page. To "like" something on the news feed requires no more than a double-tap. Facebook apps are in easy reach. The company will not show ads immediately on the phone home screen, which Facebook is calling the Cover Feed, but it is very likely to do so in the future. The first phone with the new package installed will be made by HTC and will be sold in the United States with AT&T service for about $100, starting April 12. Users of some other HTC and Samsung Android phones will also be able to download the software starting on that day, with Facebook planning to roll it out more broadly to other Android devices in the coming months. It will be available in Europe soon with Orange as the carrier, Mr. Zuckerberg said. He stressed that he wanted the new product to enable a mass, global audience to connect to Facebook, especially those who have yet to go on the Internet. "We want to build something that's accessible to everyone," he said. The new product is also intended to prompt Facebook users to return to their news feeds even more frequently than they do now. Every time they glance at their phones, at the supermarket checkout line or on the subway to work, they will effectively look at their Facebook pages. "It's going to convert idle moments to Facebook moments," said Chris Silva, a mobile industry analyst with the Altimeter Group. "I'm "liking" things, I'm messaging people, and when ads roll out, I'm interacting with them and letting Facebook monetize me as a user." Mr. Silva added that the no-frills Samsung and HTC phones that will support the new interface suggest that Facebook wants to target consumers who have yet to buy an Internet-enabled phone, both in the United States and abroad. After the United States, the largest blocs of Facebook users live in emerging markets like Brazil and India, and their numbers are growing much faster there than in Facebook's home market. But getting millions of less-affluent global users glued to Facebook will not be easy. The service will rack up huge data charges for users, unless Facebook manages to negotiate affordable packages with carrier companies. It is also unclear whether anyone, including the phone carriers, will be enthusiastic about the device. Jan Dawson, a telecommunications analyst at Ovum, said that the iPhone and many Android smartphones already do a good job of including Facebook. And he said phone carriers are unlikely to give an HTC-made Facebook phone much support because HTC's past attempt at a Facebook phone - the ChaCha, which had a physical button for posting photos on Facebook - sold poorly. "HTC may be desperate enough to do this, but carriers aren't likely to promote it heavily," Mr. Dawson said. As a gimmick, it may bring customers into stores, but they'll mostly end up buying something else. At Facebook headquarters Thursday, HTC's chief executive, Peter Chou, showed off a model of his new Facebook phone, called HTC First, in lipstick red. "HTC First is the ultimate social phone," he said. It combines the new Facebook Home and great HTC design. The new interface places a heavy emphasis on photos, much like the recent changes made to Facebook's news feed feature on the Web. "We think this is the best version of Facebook there is," Mr. Zuckerberg said. Brian X. Chen contributed reporting.