Mobile phone celebrates 25th year with 4bn sales - 15-10-2008 - 11:37

Once the preserve of flash corporate whizzkids and now an ubiquitous tool across the globe, the mobile phone is celebrating its 25th year of existence this week.

As far removed from the slimline models currently available on the market, the first 'mobile' – a Motorola DynaTAC 800x – weighed in at 1.75 pounds and, at around 13 inches long, had to be carried in a briefcase or a car.

Notably, the first call made on the breakthrough piece of technology back in 1983 was made by Bob Barnett, the then president of Ameritech Mobile Communications in Chicago, to the German-based great grandson of the original communications pioneer, Alexander Graham Bell.

In addition to its bulk, the first mobile was also restricted by its poor memory, which allowed users to store just 30 numbers, while the fact that the device needed to be charged for ten hours in order to be used for just 60 minutes also meant that it was seldom taken far from an office building.

The anniversary comes as Motorola recently predicted that some one billion mobile phones will be sold globally over the course of 2008, taking the total number of units shifted over the past quarter-century to in excess of four billion.

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