« William Wrigley Jr. and His Freebies | Main | Jerry Parr: The Man Who Saved Reagan's Life »
October 19, 2015
Dustbin of History: The Pager
The same forces that created the pager boom sent it into a tailspin just a few years later, when steadily dropping prices and ever-expanding features of cell phones caused pager owners to trade up by the millions.
By 2000, the number of pager owners in the United States was down to 37 million, a decline of nearly 40 percent in just two years. In 2002, even Motorola, which invented the modern pager business and controlled 85 percent of the American market at its peak, stopped manufacturing and servicing pagers. By 2008, there were only 6 million pager subscribers in the U.S., a nearly 90-percent drop since 1999. That year 255 million Americans owned cell phones. - - TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 19, 2015 11:52 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
I liked pagers! They were perfect for what they did. Small, unobtrusive, and best of all you could see who was trying to get you to call them. You had time to think about it before calling back. Excuses are always easier without the time pressure.
I have an iPhone6+ now. My wife bought it for me. I don't like it. It's about three-quarters as big as an iPad, and I never use 99% of its features. It does everything. But I only use it to make and receive calls. Maybe an occcasional text, when I don't want to talk to someone. OK, that's more than "occasional".
My next phone is gonna be the smallest one I can find. No internet, no email, nothing but a way to send and receive calls. If it would reach everyone, two cans and a string would be fine by me.
Posted by: Smokey ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://americandigest.org/sidelines/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 19, 2015 1:33 PM
The pager lobby failed miserably. What it should have done was get large government entitlement subsidies for pager manufacturers and service providers, and free pagers for low income (so the mommas could get get urgent calls from their chirun), all funded by a hefty tax on cell phones.
Posted by: BillH at October 19, 2015 2:08 PM
Same here Smokey, I'm seriously considering down sizing my dumb phone for a clamshell. While in theory having everything at your fingertips is neat but in reality, for me at least, it is completely dysfunctional and so are the people that adhere to them. I got my first cell back in 1995, a Sony, and wish I had it now. It did exactly what I needed and nothing more.
Posted by: ghostsniper at October 19, 2015 5:32 PM