Hyderabad: Fifty years ago on April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made history by placing the first public call from a handheld, portable cell phone on a sidewalk in Manhattan. The device, which was the size of a brick, allowed Cooper to call Joel Engel, head of AT&T-owned Bell Labs, in what was a groundbreaking moment for the telecommunications industry.
While it would be another decade before cell phones became widely available to the public, Cooper's invention paved the way for a technology that would eventually reshape industries, culture, and the way people interact with one another. From the days of the bulky, expensive devices of the 1980s to the sleek and powerful smartphones of today, cell phones have become an essential part of modern life.
Despite the ubiquity of cell phones today, Cooper's vision for the technology was clear from the beginning. In a recent interview, the 94-year-old inventor explained that he and his colleagues at Motorola had long predicted a future where everyone would have a cell phone. "We used to tell the story then that someday when you’re born, you would be assigned a phone number," Cooper said. "If you didn’t answer the phone, you would die," he said further, giving his opinion a rather dystopian tone.
As we mark the 50th anniversary of the first public cell phone call, it's clear that Cooper's prediction has largely come true. Cell phones are now an indispensable tool for communication, entertainment, and commerce, and their impact on society will continue to be felt for many years to come.
As we celebrate the 50th year of this benchmark in the human history as we know it, here are some interesting facts that reflect the role that mobile phones are playing in human lives five decades after they first came into use:
- A total of 1.10 billion cellular mobile connections are active in India as of 2023, with 692 million internet users. The figure is equivalent to 77 percent of the total population of the country.
- India is home to 467 million social media users as on January 2023, making up 32.8 percent of the total population. The count roughly includes 314.6 million Facebook users, 467 million YouTube users, 229.6 million Instagram users, 99 million LinkedIn users, and about 27.25 million Twitter users as per the data released by the respective companies.
- All across the world, there are about 6.925 billion smartphone users, 55% of which are from Asia. The number increases by 1 million new internet users per day worldwide. 98% of GenZ have smartphones.
- The dependency that humans have developed towards mobile phones in past 5 decades is unprecedented. About 87% of the population worldwide check their phones before going to sleep, while 67% check them the first thing they wake up in the morning. 7 out of 10 people check product reviews on their smartphone.
- It has not only impacted human lives, but also the world economy along with global health scenarios. The combined revenue generated by the Google play store and the iPhone app store reached $111 billion in 2020.The smartphone industry contributes over $500 Billion to the public sector'
- Smartphone usage causes 46% reduced productivity, while the usage of a phone for more than 5 hours per day has been reported to have several health hazards.
- Businesses worldwide also have high dependence on phones and the internet. 6 brands out of every 10 have a smartphone application. In 2019, people downloaded almost 204 billion apps from their smartphones, excluding app reinstalls or app updates.
