<P> In 1999 the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo released the first smartphones to achieve mass adoption within a country . Smartphones became widespread in the late 2000s, following the release of the iPhone . In the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use worldwide . Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for feature phones in early 2013 . </P> <P> The first integration of data signals with telephony was conceptualized by Nikola Tesla in 1909 and pioneered by Theodore Paraskevakos beginning in 1968 with his work on transmission of electronic data through telephone lines . In 1971, while he was working with Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, Paraskevakos demonstrated a transmitter and receiver that provided additional ways to communicate with remote equipment . This formed the original basis for what is now known as caller ID . The first caller ID equipment was installed at Peoples' Telephone Company in Leesburg, Alabama and was demonstrated to several telephone companies . The original and historic working models are still in the possession of Paraskevakos . </P> <P> The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Frank Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show . A refined version was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator . In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls, the touch screen - equipped Simon could send and receive faxes and emails . It included an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock and notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news . The term "smart phone" or "smartphone" was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as 1995, describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator . </P> <P> In the mid-late 1990s, many people who had mobile phones carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS, Newton OS, Symbian or Windows CE / Pocket PC . These operating systems would later evolve into early mobile operating systems . Most of the "smartphones" in this era were hybrid devices that combined these existing familiar PDA OSes with basic phone hardware . The results were devices that were bulkier than either dedicated mobile phones or PDAs, but allowed a limited amount of cellular Internet access . The trend at the time, however, that manufacturers competed on in both mobile phones and PDAs was to make devices smaller and slimmer . The bulk of these smartphones combined with their high cost and expensive data plans, plus other drawbacks such as expansion limitations and decreased battery life compared to separate standalone devices, generally limited their popularity to "early adopters" and business users who needed portable connectivity . </P>

When did touch screen phones first come out