Hutchison Whampoa is rolling out a 3G Facebook phone in the UK and Australia next week, just in time for the holiday season. The handset, which will have the social net integrated into it as well as instant messaging, email, and Skype, is being built by Hutchison’s new mobile device subsidiary INQ Mobile and is the first of what the fledgling handset maker calls “low cost social mobile” devices.

The ultimate goal for these cheaper 3G smartphones is to drive more consumers to use mobile data, or a INQ Mobile CEO Frank Meehan told Unstrung, “You need to drive data usage higher right across all the handset segments. You want the majority of customers, not the top-end of the community that rules strategy at the moment.”

INQ’s client-based Facebook app will always be on in the background, which means owners of the phone will get instant notice when friends update their profile, or as Meehan says, Facebook becomes like SMS.

INQ will launch five more handsets next year, but will operators other than 3 pick up the phone? 3’s Skypephone hasn’t exactly been a runaway success. Only 3 sells the phone, and so far has only shifted 300,000 of them. But Meehan says that’s because operators were “put off” by Skype, while Facebook, of course, is different. There’s also the cost of the phone. The cost to operators who pick up the phone is $200, which Meehan claims is two to three times cheaper than the average smartphone. If an American carrier were to pick it up, he estimates the cost to the consumer would be $50 on a contract.

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