A new online museum dedicated to the history of the mobile phone is set to launch later this year by a long-time collector and industry veteran.
Planned for a November 2021 opening, the Mobile Phone Museum will showcase a history of mobile phone handsets from the last 35 years, with more than 2,000 unique handsets from 200 different manufacturers.
The co-creators and co-curators are founder and phone collector Ben Wood, who has 25 years of experience in the mobile sector who serves as Chief Analyst and CMO at CCS Insight, and Matt Chatterley, who has worked for EE and currently serves at Director Devices, Identities and Partnerships at BT.
While initially launching online, the museum also plans to have pop-up physical exhibitions.
Wood said the museum is hoped to become “a rich learning resource and a way to inspire young people to go on to create incredible mobile innovations of their own in the future.”
The museum has secured Vodafone as its first major sponsor.
Max Taylor, UK Consumer Director, Vodafone, added: “Looking back at those early devices and everything which came later tells a fascinating story, not only of the technology itself and how it has evolved, but also of how we communicate.”
“We hope that by supporting Ben and Matt’s unique museum collection – the most comprehensive collection anywhere in the world – we’ll be able to help people reminisce about the devices they’ve had over the years, and get excited about what devices might be able to do for them in the future.”
