Задание 11
|
Пропуск |
A | B | C | D | E | F |
|
часть предложения |
3 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 7 |
Answers:
A — 3: and his son was making the first-ever mobile phone call in the UK
B — 6: that mobile phones would have over the next quarter century
C — 1: that there would be more phones in the UK than there are people
D — 5: trying to persuade people to do more with their phones than just call and text
E — 2: the leap from phones as technology to phones as fashion items
F — 7: and relying instead on actual call charges
Mobile phones
On New Year’s Day, 1985, Michael Harrison phoned his father, Sir Ernest, to wish him a happy new year. Sir Ernest was chairman of Racal Electronics, the owner of Vodafone, __and his son was making the first-ever mobile phone call in the UK__.
At the time, mobile phones weighed almost a kilogram, cost several thousand pounds and provided only 20 minutes talktime. The networks themselves were small; Vodafone had just a dozen masts covering London. Nobody had any idea of the huge potential of wireless communication and the dramatic impact __that mobile phones would have over the next quarter century__.
Hardly anyone believed there would come a day when mobile phones were so popular __that there would be more phones in the UK than there are people__. But in 1999 one mobile phone was sold in the UK every four seconds, and by 2004 there were more mobile phones in the UK than people. The boom was a result of increased competition which pushed prices lower and created innovations in the way that mobiles were sold.
When the government introduced more competition, companies started cutting prices to attract more customers. Cellnet, for example, changed its prices, __trying to persuade people to do more with their phones than just call and text__. It also introduced local call tariffs.
The way that handsets themselves were marketed was also changing and it was Finland’s Nokia who made __the leap from phones as technology to phones as fashion items__. In the late 1990s Nokia realized that the mobile phone was a fashion item: so it offered interchangeable covers which allowed you to customize and personalize your handset.
The mobile phone industry has spent the later part of the past decade reducing its monthly charge __and relying instead on actual call charges__, which has culminated in the fight between the iPhone and a succession of touch screen rivals.
