In the UK I remember the first time a friend had one which was in 1994 when I was 17. A year later I went to university and in 1995/6 almost nobody there had a

In the UK I remember the first time a friend had one which was in 1994 when I was 17. A year later I went to university and in 1995/6 almost nobody there had a mobile phone, the year after maybe 20% of students had them, and by my final year (97/98) almost everyone had one - so in the UK I'd say the tipping point was probably 1997, possibly triggered by affording pre-pay mobile phones becoming available in major stores and supermarkets. Just checked Wikipedia, seems that's right: > The concept was further developed by Vodafone UK, who in Oct 1997 launched 'Pay as you Talk', packaging a GSM phone with a prepay tariff, and retailing it in new kinds of mass merchandiser retailers such as Woolworths and Argos and one year later into supermarkets such as Tesco (previously mobile phones had only been sold in specialist phone retailers). Customers could buy the product outright for £149 (reducing to £99 very shortly afterwards) which came with credit and then top up as they needed. Pay as you Talk went on to be the market leading prepay proposition in the UK for many years attracting millions of new mobile customers. I was a holdout for another year or so, right up until I started trying to meet up with people in the centre of London at the busiest times of the weekend lol.