>>But then we all know how good PR can create a market, right?
>
>How many people needed mobile phones back in the day? Now they're ubiquitous.

They existed, but were called walkie-talkie. The major drawback was not just the lack of relay network, but the separation from the phone network.

While in the army I was operating a VHF radio which connected the coastal network (i.e. talking to ships and other coastal stations) to the phone network. The big thing with this simple machine was that with it any ship could contact anyone on the ground, not just those who happen to be in the room. The bad thing was that it was just semiduplex and had a single channel.

The big thing with cell phones is this connection - whoever was the first to understand the way to connect a walkie-talkie with the landlines, understood what was needed.

And while I did learn to hate the phones for a while (when our software was in diapers and customers were quite computer- and generally illiterate), I figured that calling someone still beats riding a bicycle across town just to kiss the door.