Architects of the Mobile Phone

Spencer Trask & Co. Chairman Kevin Kimberlin and Millicom CEO Orhan Sadik-Khan discuss the company’s joint venture.

The Underdogs

Five People, One Disruptive Idea

In the early 1980s, a small five-person start-up, Millicom, launched a battle against the Goliaths of phone providers, Motorola, and AT&T. Its vision: to democratize mobile communication by introducing a lightweight, fully portable cellular phone supported by an expansive mobile network. The company’s goal was twofold: develop a revolutionary handheld device, and simultaneously build the infrastructure to make it work.

But ambition alone wasn’t enough. Millicom faced stiff regulatory competition, skeptical investors, and technical constraints. The solution came in the form of a bold joint venture with Racal Electronics, a British radar and electronics firm. This partnership gave birth to Vodafone, which in 1985 launched the United Kingdom’s first commercial cellular service.

This milestone not only validated Millicom’s vision but placed it among the earliest architects of the global mobile phone revolution. What started in a small office became the nucleus of a telecommunications giant.

Changemakers: Millicom and Technophone

Shrinking the Phone, Scaling the Network

Having successfully helped birth Vodafone, Millicom set its sights on another pressing challenge: miniaturization. Early mobile phones were portable in name only—large, heavy devices often tethered to vehicles or carried like briefcases. One such prototype, developed in Sweden with E.F. Johnson & Co., was affectionately dubbed the “lunch box” phone.

Millicom enlisted Technophone, a British firm, to leap from portable to pocket-sized. In 1985, the collaboration bore fruit with the release of the Excell PCT105, the world’s first phone small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. This product helped redefine consumer expectations for convenience and design, marking a pivotal transition in mobile technology.

The product’s success didn’t just inspire hardware innovation—it set the standard for what a “personal” phone could be: compact, accessible, and ever-present.

Clip from Tomorrow’s World, June 1988. Technophone Ltd was founded by Nils Martensson. Video courtesy of YouTube.

A leaflet advertising the Excell pocketphone and cellular system. Photo courtesy of the Mobile Phone Museum.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and Associated Companies advertisement.

The Bell System: Paving the Path with 0G and 1G

The First Steps Toward Mobile Telephony

Before startups like Millicom transformed the mobile phone into a personal gadget, legacy players like Bell Laboratories laid the groundwork. Bell developed early radio telephone services in the mid-20th century, launching the Mobile Telephone Service (MTS) in 1946 and its improved successor, the IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone Service), in the 1960s.

These systems were rudimentary—calls required manual routing by operators and were limited by spectrum scarcity and bulky equipment. Nonetheless, they introduced the core concept of mobile voice communication, offering an essential precursor to modern cellular networks.

When cellular networks were formally introduced, Bell also played a key role in the United States. It built out one of the first 1G analog systems, marking the shift from centralized radio towers to distributed cellular architecture. Though the devices were large and expensive, Bell’s groundwork enabled future innovation.

Motorola: The First Handheld Call

From Prototype to Powerhouse

The modern mobile phone owes its genesis to Motorola, whose engineer Martin Cooper made the first handheld mobile phone call on April 3, 1973. Using a DynaTAC prototype, Cooper stood on a New York City street and called a rival at AT&T’s Bell Labs.

This event marked a historic moment—moving telephony out of the car and into the hand. A decade later, Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercially available mobile phone. It retailed for nearly $4,000, weighed 2 pounds, and offered 30 minutes of talk time. Yet it captured the public imagination and opened the door to mass adoption.

From 1983 to the mid-1990s, Motorola led the mobile industry with innovations like the MicroTAC (1989) and StarTAC (1996), which introduced the first flip-phone design. These innovations accelerated consumer adoption and helped shift the mobile phone from a corporate tool to a lifestyle product.