Race: Best-Selling Cellphone Brands 1976 - 2026

Best Selling Cell Phone Brands 1976 - 2026 Here's an update to this video after 5 years. I estimated some of the data for 2025 as it is not all available yet. I also projected the sales for December and into January 2026. Cell phone technology was introduced to the US in 1976 by OKI Electric, a Japanese company. They were in a race with Motorola to finalize and unveil the technology. Although they won the race, Motorola managed to set up the first test markets in Chicago and Washington DC. These are the brands that produced cell phones from the beginning until now. Researching all this information took me days. It entailed going through old industry data and company financial reports, hopefully you’ll enjoy it. 1G networks could handle 100k callers vs 20 callers on radiotelephone networks. One of the First portable cellphones was the Mobira Senator (Nokia) which weighed 22 lb. Japanese and European cellphones dominated the 80s because of higher quality while American phones had 5x the defects. 1984 Motorola DynaTAC First handheld1,800 units sold at $3,995 1985 Technophone Excell (Nokia) 1st Pocketable Cellphone 1986 Mitsubishi Roamer 1st Side-Mounted Battery 1987 OKI CDL 350XC 1st OKI Handheld Phone 1988 Samsung SH-100 First Samsung Handheld Phone 1989 Motorola MicroTAC 1st Flip-Phone Design 1990 Motorola MicroTAC White Version Released 1992 Nokia 1011 1st Handheld 2G Phone (GSM) 1994 Nokia 2110 Introduced Nokia's Iconic Ringtone 1996 Motorola StarTAC 60 million units sold 1997 Siemens S10 1st Color LCD Screen 1998 Samsung SGH-500 Response to Motorola StarTAC 1999 Nokia 3210 160 million units sold 2000 Nokia 3310 126 million units sold 2001 Japan launches 1st 3G network with NEC phones 2002 Blackberry 5820 1st Blackberry phone 2003 Nokia 1100 250 million units sold 2004 Motorola RAZR 130 million units sold 2005 Nokia 1110 250 million units sold 2006 Nokia N95 1st Modern Smartphone7 million units sold 2007 1st iPhone 6 million units sold 2008 HTC G1 1st Android1.6 million units sold 2009 Nokia 5230 Symbian OS150 million units sold 2010 HTC Evo 4G 1st 4G phone 2011 Samsung Galaxy S II 40 million units sold 2013 Samsung Galaxy S4 80 million units sold 2014 iPhone 6/6+ 222 million units sold 2015 Nokia 105 200 million units sold 2016 Samsung Galaxy S7 55 million units sold 2017 iPhone X 63 million units sold 2019 Samsung Galaxy S10 5G 1st 5G Phone What was your first cell phone ever?