The market for mobile communication was well established. In the mid 80s, car phones were already popular for rich executives and other people who needed to be accessible on the go, and it was the late 90s when flip phones started becoming accessible for middle class. In 2004, polyphonic ringtones raked in $4 billion in sales.
Bitcoin was released in 2009. By that metric, we should be far past the car phone stage by no, but we're still trying to figure out who needs this thing.
If we're talking about car phones, which I admittedly know very little about, those were released in 1946[1]. So that would mean it was ~40 years until they became popular for rich executives.
I think it's fair to say that crypto's "release" was in 2009. But the point being, technologies rarely hit "widespread adoption" within 10 years of release. I'd be curious to hear counterexamples.
Car phone service in Chicago was launched in 1946 and reached capacity within the year.
>On October 2, 1946, Motorola communications equipment carried the first calls on Illinois Bell Telephone Company's new car radiotelephone service in Chicago.[2][3] Due to the small number of radio frequencies available, the service quickly reached capacity.
Widespread adoption of mobile phones was limited by availability (or distribution) of radio frequencies. Laptops were adopted between 1987 and 1991 as soon as the input device was figured out. The 3G smart phone was figured out between 2003 and 2006 (the time most markets took to adopt 3G data). The modern touchscreen smartphone was figured out between 2007 and 2010 (the rise of the iPod touch and Android).
Bitcoin was released in 2009. By that metric, we should be far past the car phone stage by no, but we're still trying to figure out who needs this thing.