Thursday, April 04, 2013: The world is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the invention of the mobile phone.
On April 3, 1973, Motorola employee Martin Cooper made the first ever call on a mobile phone in New York to competitor ATT, reportedly saying: ‘I’m ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end.’
It was on a Motorola DynaTAC – a device 23cm tall, comprising 30 circuit boards, and which had a talk-time of 35 minutes and took 10 hours to recharge.
Mobile phone technology has come a long way since then – a triumph that has led to years of development, new inventions, and to the creation of the widely-used smartphone.
Four decades on, a worldwide multi-billion-dollar telecom industry has grown rapidly, based on wide choice, falling prices and an array of technologies.
People use phones for internet access, social networking, maps, morning alarms, games, apps, to take photos, watch video clips – as well as talking and texting.
The two most significant developments in mobile phone technology have been the widespread availability of devices and their ability to access the internet, according to Dr Mike Short, an expert from the Institution of
Engineering and Technology in the UK.
‘In the early days of mobile, consumerisation was not considered,’ he said.
‘It was made for men in suits in business, whereas consumerisation followed much later. And then access to the internet followed much later again.’
And as rival firms continue to enhance their devices and the pace of innovation speeds up, he believes there is a lot more to look forward to.
The early days of mobile were all about voice, whereas these days it is much more about data, he said.
‘In future we’ll move towards fuller data services such as video – much more video to video calling, much more screens on the wall in your home, maybe more video television downloaded, catch-up TV, that sort of
thing,’ he said.
‘The cost has already fallen a long way. What tends to happen is you get more functionality per dollar spent.
‘That would include more memory, that would include more features, that would include more capability to access the internet at higher speeds.
‘The weight has dropped dramatically already, but we’re seeing, probably this year, the first watch-based phones.’
With improvements and changes implemented so frequently, Dr Short said it is hard to know what exactly to expect in the next 40 years, but it is safe to assume millions more people in the world will have access to
mobile phones.
‘It’s very difficult to predict 40 years’ time because the pace of innovation is speeding up,’ he said.
‘I would say that we’ll all be mobile, globally, everyone will be mobile. I’d also say that we’ll be connecting many more machines via wireless mobile technology as well.
‘The world of around seven billion devices connected today should be in excess of 70 billion connected devices in 40 years’ time.’
Video available here; http://bigpondvideo.com/NewsOnDemand/533842/
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