The mobile phone, also known as cellular phone, has become one of the most successful inventions in the 20th century. In the late 90s, mobile phones became one of the major communication devices. The first commercial mobile phone system started in 1979 in Japan. According to Cellular Online, the global mobile phone subscribers in 2003 are around 1.52 billion, which is about 20 percent of the current world population. This figure showed the success of the mobile phone industries. In about 20 years’ time, this technology conquered the global and became a demand for the majority of people in the world. It provided communication for people no matter anywhere and anytime.
Mobile phones were meant to be a device which enables users to have the ease of telecommunication freely wherever they want. But in the late 90’s, SMS (Short Message Service), a new technology was brought out. SMS is a transmission of short text message from mobile phones to mobile phones. This became a revolution making mobile phones to develop into a device that not only allows simple voice to voice telecommunication. Mobile phone now not only became an entertainment device (featuring functions such as camera, FM and MP3 players etc) but also allowing users to access through the internet, personal digital assistant (PDA) functions and also having video conference using the latest 3G network. Someday, mobile phones might be able to replace computers.
From the early stages of analog cellular to now the latest 3G mobile phone system, the mobile phone developed rapidly in the past 20 years. Each stage of development provided a big improvement to the industries. From early stages of voice to voice simple communication, to the WAP and GPRS internet connection and now the high-speed internet connection through the internet, it showed that mobile phones is one of the leading technology in the high technology industry. The convenience brought by this technology indeed changed the life of many people and society. Many things such as banking, gathering information such as reports or latest news, control the share market via GPRS etc are what the technology helped to improve and ease the life of people. Japan is the country which the mobile phone technology develops the fastest in the world. Before the 3G technology was launched in other countries, the Japanese had already mastered the technology. A discussion about the fast development of mobile phone industry Japan will be included in the essay.
Studies believed that a new mobile phone network system, 5G will be in the market in the nearby future. 5G, or known as the fifth generation mobile is a whole new radio access network. Stronger and clearer signals and higher speed (broadband speed, 100 times faster than the 4G connection) connection through the internet are the highlights of the 5G technology. Although the 3G and 4G technology has only been developed not long ago, this new technology is now under development stage and believed to be put out in the market in year 2020. It is believed that the 5G will be a big leap and a whole new revolution for the mobile phone industry and it’s users.
Along with the development of mobile phones, many subsidiary technology developed by the mobile phone companies were also developed and influencing other products such as Bluetooth, Symbian (an operating system (OS) specially designed for mobile phones) and some software companies that design software for the Symbian OS. These technologies improved the interactive among mobile phones and users. It provided a much convenience and wider usage for the mobile phone users. More and more companies now are trying to gain a share in the mobile phone market. Many big companies which are developing PDA OS such as Window CE (Pocket PC), PALM and Linux are also engaging their OS with mobile phones functions. This proved that the mobile phone industry is indeed a good market to invest in. The competition in the market is also another reason causing the mobile phone industry to develop in such a short time.
Since mobile phone was developed and used by a large population of people, it changed the lifestyle of many people. On positive views, mobile phone provided a fast and immediate communication for people, which built up a much closer relationship within each another. Though, the negative views of the mobile phone became a popular discussion now. Symptoms such as radiation which causes cancer from mobile phones and mobile phone addiction are now argued to be the disadvantages of the technology. The danger brought by using mobile phones such as the unsafe of using a mobile phone during driving or radiation of mobile phone causing danger to certain places such as the gas station are also problems for mobile phone users.