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?