Many people today think it was the improvements in cell phone design that dropped rates and the cost of cellular phones to the point where today even most suburban teenagers carry cell phones when just 10 years ago many middle income adults considered them a luxury. The fact is though those who think it was the phones themselves that drove the market have it backwards. It was the wireless infrastructure that drove the market to its' current state not the devices using it.

To understand this better we need to look to New York City about 100 years ago before the modern subway was introduced there. At the time a few surface trains serviced the NYC area and many people opposed the massive investment in a subway system. You see in the early 1900s New York City was nothing like it is today, while one of the biggest cities in the US at the time that was not an enormous claim. Much of Manhattan was still vacant swampland along with many of the surrounding areas on Long Island, Brooklyn, etc. The early proponents of the system understood that if you built the infrastructure to allow people to travel swiftly throughout the city that with the ports and current businesses in the area the city would become a massive financial powerhouse. They were right, as the infrastructure came into being the city grew to what we today know as New York City with its massive impact on the global economy.

The cellular market took a similar path though it was less obvious because you don't see the cellular signals traveling though the air. Yet in the beginning cell coverage was spotty at best because there was not much of an infrastructure so even many who could afford one saw little value in having a cell phone. As the network improved because carriers started to erect cellular towers all over the nation people began to buy and use more cellular products. Then the economy of scale gained traction and as the volume of users increased the cost per phone and for service began a drop that has continued all the way up to our present day. Make no mistake though the infrastructure drove the market and caused all the associated reactions. Just as the subway was the fuel that grew NYC to 8 Million people who live and or work there, the cellular towers drove the market to an current estimated 779 Million Cell Phones that are sold each year.

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