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 operator of Japan and became the first nationwide 1G network. Several other countries also launched 1G networks in the early 1980s including the UK, Mexico and Canada. In the 1990s, the 'second generation' (2G) mobile phone systems emerged, primarily using the GSM standard. In 1991, the first GSM network (Radiolinja) launched in Finland. American and Canadian wireless providers tend to subsidize phones for consumers but tend to require 2 or 3 year contracts, while Asians and Europeans sell the phone at full cost while the monthly fees charged are lower. Mobile phone operator A mobile phone operator, wireless provider, or carrier