<P> In 1999, the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo released the first smartphones to achieve mass adoption within a country . These phones ran on i - mode, which provided data transmission speeds up to 9.6 kbit / s . Unlike future generations of wireless services, NTT DoCoMo's i - mode used cHTML, a language which restricted some aspects of traditional HTML in favor of increasing data speed for the devices . Limited functionality, small screens and limited bandwidth allowed for phones to use the slower data speeds available . The rise of i - mode helped NTT DoCoMo accumulate an estimated 40 million subscribers by the end of 2001 . It was also ranked first in market capitalization in Japan and second globally . This power would later wane in the face of the rise of 3G and new phones with advanced wireless network capabilities . </P> <P> Smartphones were still rare outside of Japan until the introduction of the Danger Hiptop in 2002, which saw moderate success among U.S. consumers as the T - Mobile Sidekick . Later, in the mid-2000s, business users in the U.S. started to adopt devices based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and then BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion . American users popularized the term "CrackBerry" in 2006 due to the BlackBerry's addictive nature . Outside of the U.S. and Japan, Nokia was seeing success with its Symbian - based smartphones, the business - oriented Eseries and entertainment - focused Nseries . </P> <P> Before 2007, it was common for devices to have a physical numeric keypad or physical QWERTY keyboard in either a candybar or sliding form factor . </P> <P> In early 2007, Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone, one of the first smartphones to use a multi-touch interface . The iPhone was notable for its use of a large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction, instead of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical for smartphones at the time . </P>

When did cell phones first hit the market