Mark Zuckerberg: Not having a Facebook phone is 'a little bit stressful'

Mark Zuckerberg

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't think his company necessarily needs to have its own operating system, but things may be much easier if it did.

Bloomberg's Emily Chang recently asked Zuckerberg about the company's competition with Google, and how Facebook overcomes not having a large platform like Android to distribute its services.

For Zuckerberg, improving incredibly popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp are what matters — the company doesn't need it's own operating system of a Facebook phone.Â

But, he did hint at the idea that Facebook would be able to serve its users better if it was more closely tied into a smartphone's operating system. Here's part of what he said to Chang:

It’s something that certainly is a little bit stressful. Maybe we can help people out more, or deliver our services a little bit better if we had more partnerships with the operating systems we were using to build our stuff. But it’s not something that I’m that stressed about at this point.

Rumors of a Facebook phone have been swirling around for years, but the company hasn't made any announcements regarding plans to move into hardware.

The closest product to the long-rumored "Facebook phone" was the HTC First, an Android phone released in 2013 that came with a skin over it called Facebook Home. This essentially integrated things like Facebook notifications and messages into the operating system. It didn't exactly set the world on fire — HTC and AT&T had to drop the price after less than a month in the U.S. market, and HTC canceled the phone's U.K. launch.

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