Cellular: An economic and business history of the international mobile‐phone industry.Daniel D.Garcia‐Swartz and MartinCampbell‐Kelly, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022. pp. 400. 75 figs. ISBN 9780262543927, Pbk $45)
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: This book is part of several collaborations between Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel Garcia-Swartz on the history of computing, including notable contributions to two-sided markets.In Cellular, the authors offer a comprehensive, long-term, and detailed development of the mobilephone telephone industry, combining relevant aspects in North America, Asia, and selected emerging markets.As a result, this book delves into the evolution of cellular technology, the emergence of key players, and the intricate interplay of market forces, policy decisions, and technological advancements that have driven its growth.Cellular offers insights into the industry's development, its impact on society, and the challenges and opportunities it faces in the digital age.Given that all these deep insights are covered in less than 400 pages, the book offers a fantastic feat of synthesis.Throughout the book, the authors aim to keep a balance between technical details to properly inform the study and avoid confusing readers who are not engineers.Data are drawn from prior scholarship, government documents, and industry reports.The book has an introduction, 12 chapters, and a conclusion, and structures its chronology around four parts, each divided into three chapters, namely, origins, standards, competition, and growth.Each part roughly maps to a decade of cellular phone generation.Although many of us loosely speak of the impact of information and telecommunication technology, the historiography easily finds they have been kept apart, particularly in the contributions around computers and computing.Communications were not really integrated into computer devices before the 1980s.This is mirrored in the stories about mechanical and electromechanical devices of the interwar period up to the 1950s, mainframes and mini computers in the 1960s and 1970s, and gaming consoles and personal computers of the 1980s.Indeed, there are but a handful of contributions to the economic history of information technology whilst many of these focus on a single country or a limited time period.Garcia-Swartz and Campbell-Kelly argue that mobile wireless communication is a distinctive computer, information, and communication platform that deserves a story of its own from an international perspective, considering its origins until contemporary developments.
Source: The Economic History Review
DOI: 10.1111/ehr.13379
Author: Bernardo Bátiz‐Lazo
Institutions: Northumbria University, Universidad Anáhuac
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Science Applications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4402542779