Giant Leaps in the Smartphone Wars

I wanted to create a method to reduce the slavish copying of my words, phrases, phrasing, ideas, posts, analysis et al. Even more than that, I wanted a means to, well, show off a bit. 

I have decided to keep a open file on those ideas that were first brought to life here on The Smartphone Wars or that are regularly practiced here despite the (seeming) impossible odds. These include:

1. All smartphones. The first site fully dedicated to discussing and analyzing smartphones and the smartphone wars
2. The smartphone is the computer! I created this phrase, a riff on the 80s The network is the computer, to help people understand the revolutionary global all-encompassing importance of the smartphone.
3. Think locally scale globally! This concept is designed to popularize the understanding of how smartphones, the mobile web and social media are rewriting how businesses should be built. Not on global problems, but on hyperlocal ones. That scale.
4. One smartphone per child. I want a world where every child has a smartphone -- not a laptop or XO Computer, and have stated my reasons for this desire.
5. Smartphone rankings. A new methodology for rating/scoring smartphones and technology. I use a format typically used for ranking college recruits and judging players in the NFL combine and similar scouting services.
6. The app as gateway. Back when all the pundits were telling you that HTMLx and a variety of other technologies would make the smartphone app an evolutionary cul-de-sac, I told you, repeatedly, not to believe this. The app is the *primary* means of accessing our smartphones and the smartphone is the *primary* means of accessing the web. The app rules.
7. The mobile web is the web. This should be self explanatory.
8. One billion smartphones. Back in 2009, I told you there would be 1 billion smartphones in use by 2016. This was considered non-sensical; now it is considered conservative.
9. Death: In 2009, I wrote why, by 2016, email and Office and Windows (and Blu Ray and a host of technologies and products) would be effectively dead.
10. Poverty: Built a web community that funds itself without using ads or sponsor links.
11. Words: Coined the phrases "hyperlocal is hyperglobal" and labeled the new web the "smart social mobile web" (which may not prove as popular as what others created later: local mobile social.
12. Facebook Credits: predicted that Facebook would be worth more than Google. Back in summer, 2010.
13. Video and content: as written in early 2010, a reminder to content distributors that the smartphone demands the following: 'we want what we want when we want it where we want it on the screen/device we want it on'.
14. One trillion dollars: yes, before others, I told you that Apple would be the first trillion-dollar company.
15. Apple v Amazon: As written several times since 2009, a warning that the big company battle is not between Apple and Google, but Apple and Amazon. 
16. Leadership: Told you that by 2016, at the latest, the CEOs of Apple, Google and Microsoft would not be Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Steve Ballmer, respectively.
17. Debt: at the start of 2010, possibly earlier given the clear destructive force of the smartphone and the smart social mobile web, that at least one of America's two major political parties would seek cancellation of America's debt with foreign governments, by no later than 2016. At least by 2009, I similarly told you that US states totaling 50 million in population would actively default on their obligations.
18. Billions of smartphones: predicted 5 billion smartphones in use by 2020.
19. China v Google: predicted that China would seek to acquire Google. 
20. Google vs User: from decrying Google's betrayal of net neutrality to the harm of Google advertising, to altered Google algorithms et al, have been among the first to document Google's many transgressions against the free and open Internet.
21. Android is not open. Look it up. I've been telling readers that Android is not and *never has been* open, long before pundits clued in to this. 
22. Destruction: have told you, from the beginning, that the smartphone will destroy everything. Yes, everything. Every industry, market, business, business model.
23. The future is evenly distributed! Do not believe the continued hype re digital divides. The smartphone is creating a "Great Leveling" in access and opportunity.
24. Business models: I have repeatedly documented the how and why of new business models that can *only* thrive in the era of the smartphone. These include: "values equal profits", "the only place is here the only time is now", and "information wants to be monetized". 
25. Taiwan: among the first pundits, and one of the very first sites, to focus on Taiwan, its handset makers, logistics companies and manufacturing leadership, to help divine the near-term plans for those companies directly involved in the smartphone wars.
26. Meego and the demise of Nokia: before it was released, before even the N8 was released, I listed the reasons why Nokia was likely to be acquired -- by 2011 -- and why MeeGo was dead.
27. Apple licensing: one of the first -- and most persistent -- to push Apple to offering iCloud app/content synching across like apps even if not on an Apple device. 
28. The virtual is the real. Before you ever heard of Foursquare, before a Facebook places feature existed, and while future-thinking experts were talking about how all of us would soon port our real selves into a virtual cyberworld, I was telling you this was backwards. We are instead bringing virtual into the real, using digital content to enhance and alter our actual physical interactions.
29. Brazil. Back in 2009 (search this site), I wrote several pieces on why America, particularly, should look to Brazil, not China, to understand its future, the use of smartphones, how location-based services, content distribution and other smartphone related applications would evolve. And to uncover the potential of a fast-growth economy -- and understand the implications of a rising elite class.
30. Jack Dorsey @ Apple. I was the first pundit to suggest Apple hire Jack Dorsey to replace Steve Jobs *and* the first to suggest that the company was at least reviewing the possibility.
31. Smartphone novel! The publication of my first novel, The Empty Spaces (September 2011), places smartphones front and center as a central technology that drives the plot. 
32. Amazon smartphone. I wrote in 2010 why Amazon would offer a smartphone. I provided my rationale for this again in late 2011. Within a week, nearly every tech media outlet ran with the news of the possibility of a Amazon smartphone.
33. Android feature phone. Part of the rationale for Google's purchase of Motorola I said, and still only me at this writing, was to develop a deconstructed fork of Android to run on feature phones, phones that I have said, will support Google search, Gmail, features of Google+ and possibly Google Maps, and little else. Google may, in fact, give these away. 
34. The iPad (mini) as Apple Television controller. I was the first to note that Apple would develop a smaller 'iPad' that could be used as a slick controller for the Apple Television, while serving simultaneously as a means of supporting 'lean back' activities that tv viewers love to engage in, and help Apple move down into the low-end tablet space and possibly become a new gaming console -- as multiple iPad mini's could link up.
35. Shipped down *not* equal sold. Was one of the very first analysts to demand *sold* numbers for smartphones, not shipped. This has now become standard policy to ignore/belittle shipped numbers.
36. Apple's Youtube.  Apple, I said (first) was leveraging their giant iCloud server farm plus (upcoming) Apple Television with iPhone and its steadily improving battery to build a YouTube competitor. (7 February 2012)