and the first thing you always said was, hey, i'm calling from the car. >> when these things started to pop up in the mid 1980s, the customers were people who had a business reason for having these things or a super rich dude who just wanted to show off. the big break through idea was the idea of cellular systems. >> it's called cellular because your car phone is tied into different transmitters, called a cell, and as your car travels, the signal goes from cell to cell. >> this is something that had never been done before. >> if you don't have one now, you probably will have one in a decade say the makers. >> there were people who understood even in the early days that being trapped in a car was not freedom. people are fundamentally, naturally, mobile. >> i like to say the technology will go from a phone in the car to a phone in the briefcase to finally a phone in your pocket. >> and this is it. this is a portable cellular