We’ve Gotta Have It!

It seems to happen like this: you’re living your life and suddenly you must have a certain communication device, you just can’t possibly function in the same way without it. For your parents it might have been a VCR or a personal computer, maybe a digital pager. For your grandparents it might have been an answering machine or a fax machine for their business. For you, it is likely a Smartphone.

The speed at which a society begins using new communication devices is called an adoption rate. It is measured by how long it takes a certain percentage of the population to collective use it. There are three levels.

When 10 percent of the people begin using something, there is traction. It reaches maturity when the numbers of people using a new product rises to between 10 percent and 40 percent. The product’s saturation point is met when more than 40 percent of people are comfortably using a product. A study conducted by International Telecommunications Union, shows that it has only taken four years for more than 40 percent of the population to have a Smartphone. No other comparable technology has reached the saturation point at such a rapid pace.

There are many modern inventions that have made an impact on the way we communicate. To get an idea of how adoption rates line up, let’s take a look at the biggies:

• Telephone (landlines) – It took a while for telephones to catch on. Patented in 1876 and made available to the public in1878, there were only about 49,000 telephones in use by 1881. People were afraid of the notion of sound traveling across electrical wire. By 1905, nearly 2.5 million Americans owned a phone. But it took almost 45 years for the telephone to reach 50 percent of the population and nearly 60 years to reach full saturation.

• Radio – The original “wireless.” People went crazy over the notion of radio when it became available in 1920. Manufacturers were overwhelmed with orders and people stood in lines to get them. (Does that sound familiar?) By 1922, there were 600 radio stations located across the country. Like the telephone, some people thought radio was “unnatural” and were afraid. But for most, it changed that way people thought about distance and time. Family traditions were created around listening to weekly broadcast programs. Radio sales went from $10 million in 1922 to more than $358 million in 1924.

• Television – Radio certainly paved the way for the quick adoption of the television. Cross-media ownership of newspapers, radio stations and television licenses helped further spread consumer demand for programming. As much as people went nuts over radio, they clamored for televisions even more. In 1946 only .05 percent of U.S. homes had a television. But 1954 that amount had exploded to 56 percent. By 1962, around 90 percent of American homes had a television.

• Computer – While it might seem strange to think of a home without at least one personal computer, this technology–like the telephone–took some time to make its mark. The first true personal computer, the Altair, was made available in 1975 just a few years ahead of the Atari 400/800, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and the Apple II. It would take almost ten more years for the market to reach traction and 35 more years for full market saturation.

• Mobile Phone – AT&T made mobile phones available as early as 1947. But the technology only allowed for three people to make calls at once and the cost was $15 a month ($176 today) in addition to up to $4.75 per call. Only 5,000 people had the service. Twenty years later, AT&T tried again, offering an improved service that made its way to 40,000 customers. But the technology was still developing and people had to wait up to 30 minutes to make a call. Car phones became a luxury item in the 1980s. It wasn’t until the 1990s, that the “second generation” (2G) of mobile phones became a practical convenience for consumers. Today, cell phones are being used by 91 percent of American adults.

• Internet –The U.S. Department of Defense had a research department called the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). In 1969 they created ARPANET, a digital networking communications method, a pre-curser to the World Wide Web. It grew from 4 “hosts” to over 300,000 by 1990. AOL was launched in 1989, but 1995 is considered the first year that the Web became “commercialized.” Today, approximately 70 percent of all American adults have a high-speed internet connection in their home.

• Smart Phone – Once people got used to having computers in their home and cell phones in their pockets, they really liked the idea of having both. The IBM Simon (1994) was the first device to combine cellular technology with a mobile operating system. But there were only 2,000 of them made and they cost $900. While other Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) came along in the late 1990s, everything changed when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. This device combined the growing popularity of digital music players with the mobile phone and an imcreasingly versatile internet and media device. Consumers could download songs, watch movies, take pictures and surf the web all with one pocket product. The market adoption rates for Smartphones have spread faster than any other technology. This is because it only took four years for the iPhone to reach market saturation.

The driving force between innovation and invention is almost always social and cultural change. As long as we continue to crave “what’s next” we are not likely to stop this trend anytime soon.

Additional Resources

• To learn more about the development of personal computers, visit the Computer History Museum Web site and read about some of the milestone innovations from different companies in the last several decades.
• Mobile computing is not only about Smartphones. The Computer History Museum Web site shows the many different ways we have tried to put a computer in our pocket.
• Computes became more powerful when they were connected together. This exhibit talks about the history of interconnectivity.