Admit it, you or someone you know has a smart phone these days.  Smart phones are everywhere and are taking over and acting as a payment device at your local Starbucks, thanks to apps they can control your heating and lighting at the office or house.  Smart phones can even start your car remotely.  Let’s take a look back over the years and see how the mobile market has changed. Today, nearly 1.9 billion phones are sold globally a year, with an estimated 54% of them being smart phones.  In 2000, phone sales were just over 400 million globally.  In the last 13 years, thanks to the rapid technology and advancement in phones, sales continue to steadily grow each year.

Back in the late 1990s the Motorola StarTac phone was the leader in the industry, the icon. The Motorola StarTac phone could make calls, hold no more than 100 contacts and texting was not an easy task as there was no QWERTY keyboard or touch screen phones at the time.  This was the era where if you had the Motorola StarTac and needed to store more than just your baby sitter, dog sitter and bosses work number in your phone, you needed to add a piggy back device onto the back of the phone known as the Motorola StarTac organizer.  This device would not only allow you to increase your phones stored number list but could also schedule your appointments for you as well.

Today most phones can hold hundreds of contacts, come equipped with cameras, appointment schedulers and most phones come with mini programs most often known as applications or "apps". Applications are so easily accessible because todays phones most often operate on a common operating system.   You will often see applications more commonly referred to as “apps” developed for two different phone operating systems; Android or Apple.  Android has become the market leader with Apple in a distant second place.  

Today, phones are not just a phone; they seem to be a fashion statement, a status symbol.  People line up outside stores for the release of phones.  People pre-order and wait weeks in advance for the latest phone.  Currently, nationwide between all carriers an average of five new phone models arrive to the market each week. 
What does all this mean for the consumer?  Well one thing is for sure, the market continues to grow at a steady rate and as it does, you will be become more reliant than ever on your phone.