Then Minister for Communications Jim Mitchell (right) makes Ireland’s inaugural mobile telephone call to RTÉ broadcaster Pat Kenny, December 11, 1985. Prices for the phones started at £1400 plus VAT
This morning.
Lia Stokes writes:
Today marks 35 years since the first ever mobile phone call was made in Ireland by Jim Mitchell, Minister for Communications to RTE broadcaster Pat Kenny.
To celebrate this milestone, Ireland’s longest serving mobile retail brand, Carphone Warehouse is looking back on the evolution of the mobile phone and how we use it.
In the 1980’s it was all car phones and brick phones, and with the cost coming in at around £3,000, they were few and far between. No one could have foreseen that mobile phones would become an extension of our work, home and social lives.
Carphone Warehouse entered the Irish market in 1996 with the opening of their first store on Grafton Street. The company, now has 81 shops across the country with a presence in most major towns and cities. They also employ over 600 people and serve over 4 million customers each year.
In a recent survey commissioned by the brand, 57% of respondents had a Nokia as their first mobile phone with just 2% having an iPhone. Interestingly, now 53% of those people have an iPhone as their current model, 30% using Samsung, 14% Huawei and just 3% accounting for other brands. (In a survey commissioned by Deloitte last year, it found that 91% of Irish people own a smartphone.)
Meanwhile…
Long talk!
Ciarán writes:
Still have the box (above) from my first one! (1995 I think)