{"id":6739,"date":"2012-02-27T08:58:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T08:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=6739"},"modified":"2012-02-27T10:10:27","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T10:10:27","slug":"the-most-iconic-cellphones-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/6739\/the-most-iconic-cellphones-in-sa\/","title":{"rendered":"The most iconic cellphones in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s cellular history dates back to the early days of what is now called \u201c2G\u201d technology, which emerged along with the Groupe Sp\u00e9cial Mobile<\/em> (GSM) standard in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

The acronym was later translated to Global System for Mobile Communications.<\/p>\n

Radiolinja in Finland was the first GSM network to go into operation and saw its first official phone call on 1 July 1991. South Africa\u2019s first cellular operator, Vodacom<\/a>, got its first commercial calls in 1994.<\/p>\n

Alan Knott-Craig<\/a>, the new CEO of Cell C<\/a>, was head of Vodacom at the time. In all of South Africa\u2019s cellular history, Knott-Craig feels the Nokia<\/a> 6310i and its predecessor, the 6310, are the most iconic cellphones.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig wasn\u2019t the only high-up in the cellular industry to choose a Nokia device as the most iconic phone to hit our shores. In fact, everyone we asked put forward a device made by the Finnish cellphone maker.<\/p>\n

\"Nokia<\/a>

Nokia 6310<\/p><\/div>\n

The Nokia 2110 series was considered the most iconic by 8ta\u2019s<\/a> senior managing executive Amith Maharaj<\/a>, Virgin Mobile SA\u2019s<\/a> chief sales officer Mike Sidwell, and Vodacom\u2019s Jannie van Zyl<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nokia 1100\/1 sold millions and everybody had one or knew someone who had one, but I guess for me the Nokia 2110 was the most iconic,\u201d said Sidwell. \u201cLaunched in 1994 when we first launched cellular in South Africa it had the pull-up antennae and the Nokia ringtone that everybody came to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nokia<\/a>

Nokia 2110<\/p><\/div>\n

Mike Fairon<\/a>, head of products and services at MTN SA, said that he believes two phones seem to have defined the history of the mobile industry in the last two decades.<\/p>\n

The first is the Nokia<\/a> 3310 which was released in the fourth quarter of 2000, which MTN said was one of the cellphone maker\u2019s record-selling devices.<\/p>\n

Its compact form factor and many built-in utilities such as a calculator, stop watch, and the ability to send 459 character text messages in 3 SMSes are some of the reasons for its success, Fairon said.<\/p>\n

\"Nokia<\/a>

Nokia 3310 and Motorola RAZR V3<\/p><\/div>\n

Fairon\u2019s second pick was the Motorola<\/a> V3 Razr, which MTN said sold over 50 million units by July 2006 after its price was lowered within a year of its launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday this remains as the best ever sold clam shell by volume globally and equally had its craze in South Africa,\u201d Fairon said.<\/p>\n

Vodacom was asked to provide the picks of their CEO, Pieter Uys<\/a>, but was not able to do so by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

\"Motorola<\/a>

Motorola MicroTAC International 5200<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cellular executives weigh-in on which handsets they found to be the most iconic in South Africa’s cellular history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":6747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[407,25,43,409,42,1701,1702,1704,1703,295,28,187,87,77,27],"class_list":["post-6739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-8ta","tag-active","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-amith-maharaj","tag-cell-c","tag-gsm","tag-jannie-van-zyl","tag-mike-fairon","tag-mike-sidwell","tag-motorola","tag-mtn","tag-nokia","tag-pieter-uys","tag-virgin-mobile","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6754,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6739\/revisions\/6754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}