The next five years will see a dramatic slowing of worldwide cellular subscriber growth, reports In-Stat/MDR. However, despite the fact that there has been a lot of fuss about the “catastrophic slowdown” in subscriber growth, there will be more than 931 million new subscribers over the next 5 years.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries announced today that they will begin marketing the P505i on August 8, 2003. At a trim 19.9 mm when folded, the new model is the slimmest in the 505i series of enhanced 2G handsets.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd and Sony Corporation today announced that an agreement has been reached whereby Samsung is licensed by Sony to manufacture and sell Memory Stick media. Under this agreement, Samsung will begin in-house manufacturing and sales of Memory Stick media from the third quarter of 2003.
According to analysts at IDC, our need for handsets seems almost insatiable as far more phones were sold in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2002. The worldwide market for handsets took off in the second quarter of 2003, reflecting continued consumer demand for mobile telephony. According to IDC’s Worldwide Handset QView, worldwide handset shipments grew by 19.2% year-over-year in 2Q03 and increased sequentially by 6.7% to 118.3 million units.
Nobody may be willing to bet who TDSAT will crown king, GSM or CDMA, but on the global stage, GSM has checkmated CDMA. Latest numbers from UK-based EMC, the world’s leading provider of specialised market intelligence on wireless communications, confirms a whopping 81% of new mobile subscribers worldwide opted for GSM in the first quarter of 2003. By contrast, global appetite for CDMA appears to have dwindled, accounting for a mere 13% of incremental global mobility subscriptions.
Ten years ago, the cell phone was a luxury item used by businessmen. Now just about everybody in Japan has a ‘keitai,’ and the ubiquitous little devices have transformed interpersonal communications. This essay by the inventor of the Personal Handyphone offers a look back over the brief history of the cell phone.
