Cellular Telephony in the United States in the Year 2000

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In 1980, AT&T commissioned McKinsey and company to predict cell phones. They forecasted 900,000 people would be subscribed to a cellular telephony network in the year 2000. That number was off by over 100 X. And they could kind of foresee this, you know, because they knew what the demand was. Ericsson's well on the way to like pilots proving showing it works. But one incredible, I think this took five years to eventually become official.

Qualcomm, or “Quality Communications” — despite being one of the largest technology companies in the world, few people know the absolutely amazing technological and business history behind it. Seriously, this story is on par with Nvidia, TSMC and all the great semiconductor giants. Without this single fabless company based in San Diego, there’s almost no chance you’d be consuming this episode on whatever device you’re currently listening on — a fact that enables them to earn an incredible estimated $20 for every new phone sold in the world. We dive into this story live at the perfect venue: our first-ever European live show at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in beautiful Lisbon, Portugal!

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