Social networking giant Facebook is secretly working on a way to put their own App Store on tens of millions of iOS devices. It’s called Project Spartan, and it’s an aggressive attempt to build an HTML5 front end for all of Facebook’s existing apps on any Apple device, even without Flash installed.
According to Techcrunch’s sources, eighty outside developers including contributions from big name companies like Zynga are currently working on Project Spartan, and making sure it supports both interactive games and credits.
The goal here is not just to make Facebook as full-featured and rich on mobile devices without Flash as it is on the desktop, but also to undermine the iOS App Store with an app marketplace that Apple can not stamp down on or control.
It’s a pretty bold vision for the future, but how successful Facebook can be competing with the App Store on Apple’s own devices is something else entirely.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
