It is no coincidence that the Ericofon, or Cobra phone as it is also called, is the face of both foreign and Swedish books and media about the history of the telephone. Creating a one-piece telephone had long been a dream for all the world's telephone manufacturers. The first attempt was made by Siemens & Halske in Germany as early as 1930, but the project did not progress beyond a short test series of a far from complete phone. Instead, it was Ericsson that was first to market with the groundbreaking “all-in-one” telephone. After its launch in 1956, the Ericofon achieved immediate success with customers, and within just over half a year, orders exceeded production capacity by 500 percent.
The Cobra phone became a hot design object, and as early as the 1970s, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York presented the 300 best-designed industrial products of the entire 20th century, among which the Cobra phone was praised as one of them, and today it is part of their collections.
The Ericofon marks a paradigm shift in telephone design. Its both obvious and spectacular design represented a complete break from the earlier heavy, black Bakelite devices. It is also the first Swedish telephone to have its own name, rather than just a number and letter ID, the first sign that the telephone was seen more as a consumer product than merely an extension of telephony as a system.