Mobile phone commercially available handheld mobile phone. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew to over seven billion—enough to provide one for every person on Earth. In first quarter of 2016, the top smartphone developers worldwide were Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, with smartphone sales represented 78 percent of total mobile phone sales. For feature phones (or "dumbphones") , the largest were Samsung, Nokia, and Alcatel. A handheld mobile radio telephone service was envisioned in the early stages of radio engineering. In 1917, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt filed a patent for a "pocket-size folding telephone with a very thin carbon microphone".
Mobile phone content advertising to increase market share in low-income/high-population areas, as well as provide a line extension for ad-supported MVNO's. A new approach to mobile content advertising is the use of viral marketing. Through specially designed programmes users can send recommendations for mobile content they like to their contact lists. Passa Parola, the Italian version of Meyou, has reached a total of 800,000 registered users, by the use of viral marketing alone. From: "MoConDi has the viral say". On 19 June 2003 NASCAR prohibited advertising by any new mobile phone companies who were not in the sport at the time; mobile phone companies