As of the 3rd of April 2013, the Mobile Phone is 40 years old. On this day 40 years ago in 1973, the world’s first mobile phone call was made by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper on the Motorola DynaTAC in New York. The phone at that time was 9 inches long, weighed about 2Kg, had an external aerial, a calling battery life of 25 mins and a recharge time of 10 hours.
At the time it was the most advanced piece of mobile technology to exist in the world, and it signalled the beginning of the Mobile Information Age. It took another 10 years before mobile phones started to see any adoption, and even then they were the toys of the rich and the incredibly busy. It wasn’t until the early 90s that consumerisation of mobile phones really started to happen, and not until the early 2000s that mobiles became ubiquitous.
The introduction of 3G created the third surge of mobile adoption as the “always on” culture started to emerge in the mid-2000s and then in 2007, the iPhone came along and changed everything. There was actually a full touchscreen smartphone before the iPhone, made by LG, but it was lost in the tidal wave of hype that followed Apple’s seminal release.
Now, four decades on from the first ever mobile phone call, we have a myriad of interconnected Smartphones and a “Game of Phones” as one TechCrunch article called it. Where once it was PCs that created the richest people in tech, now it is smart-devices and the entire ecosystem they have created and are part of.
Worldwide the telecoms industry is worth around $950 billion and that number is only growing at a rapid pace. In fact, despite the woes of the economic world, IT and the mobile tech industry are seeing continued strong growth.
Mike Short, from the Institute of Technology and Engineering says:
“In the early days of mobile, consumerisation was not considered. It was made for men in suits in business, whereas consumerisation followed much later. And then access to the internet followed much later again. The first smartphones weren’t until about five years ago. So the pace of change has actually sped up over the 40 years, particularly in the past 15 to 18 years.”
In the last 50 years, technology has advanced faster than any other time in human history and it’s very visible in the mobile phone industry. The newest, latest, most powerful smartphone is made obsolete by a competing phone in 3 months. And smartphones are now being tipped to beat consoles in terms of computing power in the next few years. We’re already getting close to current generation consoles in terms of graphics quality, and the mobile gaming arena is only going to get bigger as the phones get faster.
Where are we going to see the mobile phone go in the next 40 years?
Tough to say really, but it’s very likely that the trend that’s moving them into becoming “one-device-fits-all” computers that, depending on the situation, are a mobile phone, a tablet and when placed in a dock, become fully fledged PCs. Ubuntu is already trying to do this with their mobile OS and it’s likely if customers show interest in this that other companies like Samsung will at least dabble in this area.
The easiest thing to say is that the future of mobile computing looks very bright, and that app development has been the river that has kept the wheel turning. So if you’re an app developer, remember that you are part of the driving force that is pushing our industry forward; and to continue to do that there are always more great apps to create.
