The smartphone wars were launched in 2007. The original iPhone was the opening salvo in the destruction of everything.

My goal for this site is to provide the absolute best writing on the personal, political, communal and financial impacts of the global spread of smartphones and the real-time social mobile web.

Here is the Smartphone Wars story schedule (until further notice):

Monday - Friday

1. Smartphone Quote
2. Smartphone Poll
3. The view from my smartphone
4. Smartphone Top 10
5. Smartphone Number of the Day
6. Big Story
7. Guest Post
8. Smartphone Rankings/Technology Rankings
9. Flotsam

We are proudly ad free and 100% funded by reader donations.

Our mission is to safely guide individuals, businesses and policymakers through the Smartphone Wars and the global re-construction of wealth, power, work, connectivity and opportunity. We want you to succeed amidst constant radical change. We hope our independent, unbiased advice on the potential for work, investing, creating a business and improving your community are beneficial to you. If so, we ask for your support.

Yes and yes.

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All I can tell you is what momma always told me:  I'm the legitimate one.

I don't understand?

Dear Leader is Dear Leader.

In his mortal form, he was given the name Steve Jobs.

Our President and leader of the free people, Barack H. Obama.

Oh, some also use that name for a character in Dune. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Smartphones? No, those are third.

Women? Nope, second.

The biggest destructive force on the planet: Children.

There are over 2 billion children in the world. The very tools that we now use to operate business, commerce, buying, selling, creation, influence; namely, mobile connectivity, smartphones, the Internet, vrituality, are becoming *equally* accessible to children as to adults.

This is unprecedented in history.

More: the children are more intuitively capable of manipulating, leveraging, distributing and enhancing these tools than are adults.

The children are not our future. They are our present.

As your guide through the Smartphone Wars, ask me any question -- on technology, smartphones, social networks, the economy, hyperlocal services, the mobile web, President Obama, the future of America, changes in learning and education; my rankings of smartphones, cities, web services; other. All reasonable questions will be posted and answered. Send them through the CONTACT page.

There is no exact date, although some point to the release of the iPhone 3G in 2008. Others, to the day in May 2010 when Apple's market cap surpassed Microsoft's.

Rather than point to a single date, however, the planet entered the smartphone wars as the result of a confluence of trends that, while acting independently from one another, are having a singular impact in the aggregate: the destruction of everything. This includes power, commerce, markets, learning, access, opportunity, jobs, media, culture. Everything.

To make it easy, however, I use the date of January 2009, the date of the inauguration of Barack Obama. This is the date when...

• A black man was elected President of the United States
• Approximately 50% of America's public school students were minorities
• A white man from the West went to China, begging for money
• The United States' auto industry collapsed
• America's financial sector came to the edge of a cliff, and fell off
• Hardworking Americans began walking away from their debts, en masse, and the culture accepted this
• The masses began to eagerly anticipate the release of the newest iPhones, Blackberrys and new Android smartphones

The smartphone wars, and the rapid, global spread of smartphones and the smart social mobile web, along with the new avenues of wealth and access and opportunity and connectivity they bring  will destroy everything. Yes, everything. By 2016. When the world will no longer be as it once was.

This isn't the 1980s, son. The trends I use are simply far more important to the sustained well-being of these localities as we enter, survive, then thrive during and after the Smartphone Wars.

I use a Drupal theme, almost completely self-taught,  basic web hosting, Google Analytics and monetize the content through:

• Reader donations
• Google
• Chitika (search engin ad network)
• Linkshare and Commission Junction (affiliate sponsorships)
• Amazon (for my smartphone store and other services)

Caution: this work is not necessarily easy, but it is rewarding. I work very hard, very diligently -- and passionately -- on this site. I have regular readers on 6 continents. To operate this enterprise, it takes merely a web host, my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. Little more. I use and recommend the following products and services:

I use Linkshare to earn sponsor referral fees.

I use an iPhone for contacts, social networking, to track my website activities, sponsor fees and post to the blog. Pretty much everything.

I use AN Hosting as my site host; choosing them for cost, reliability and blogger support.

I want the very best for America, Americans and hope for a beter world.

I will periodically list some of my views for the entire community during this tumultuous time. These typically include:

1. A belief in God and faith and humanity.
2. Grace, before every meal, can improve our spirits, our health and the manner in which we treat animals.
3. One Smartphone Per Child -- will radically improve the world. (Unless you're a dinosaur, then it sucks to be you.)
4. Everyone should always be provided quality healthcare. Everyone.
5. Healthy eating, good food, walking and physical activity should be encouraged through our culture, social policy, development, tax code, schools and community organizations.
6. Our schools are failing tens of millions of children. This is dumb, dangerous and costly. Let's destroy the 20th century education infrastructure complex before it destroys us. Those that cling to this debilitating model out of political expediency are amongst the people I have the most scorn for.
7. We now, and probably forever, live in a world where tools of culture, connectivity and commerce flow primarily to youth and disproportionately to the marginalized. Embrace this. Though it will be quite scary as it changes everything. Yes, everything.
   
8. Don't diminish your faith by denying what you know to be true.
9. The best funding for your start-up is a currently held full-time job.
10. We each may be called upon to act nobly and heroically in a situation in which there will simply not be enough lifeboats for everyone.

The likeliest answer is that your product/smartphone/other device or service isn't relevant. That said, either send me the product and/or tell me about it and we can discuss further. Any products, smartphones, business models I review are then made public -- unless it is for pre-disclosed marketing and consulting services, which carry a fee and which are not publicized on this site (unless you request).

Premium ranking and analysis services include in-depth analysis and supporting data.

If you think there is some relevant product out there that I should review using my algorithm, please bring it to my attention via the CONTACT page.

2016 is the date I use in my predictions and the date where we transition from...the destruction of everything to the creation of everything.

2016 represents:

1. the final potential year of the transformative (for good or bad) presidency of Barack Obama
2. marks the first global summer Olympic Games in the "developing" world
3. is the year I predict there will be 1 billion smartphones
   
4. the wrenching six-year transitional period where chunks of the West's power, prestige, influence and wealth flow to the East/developing world and we in the US and Europe accept that this world no longer belongs to us.

By 2016, any time you have to change yourself, your family, your lifestyle, your potential, your country, will have expired. Use these next six years wisely. 

I'm glad you asked!

The Great Recession is the long, deep nation-wide recession that the US, and numerous other developed countries, almost experienced -- and would have had our elected representatives not borrowed from developing countries and funneled that money to each of us. Postponing the inevitable.

The Great Reset is the term clever people have coined to suggest that America, most of all, will have to begin altering its societal habits and lifestyle because we will no longer be able to borrow cheaply from the Third World to pay for our consumption. This is false. America and the West will continue to borrow, continue to live as before, until we no longer can do so. There will be no slight, gradual, planned re-adjustment.

The Great Leveling is the term I created. It describes the age we have now entered; the period known now as the Smarphone Wars. This time represents a confluence of the end of America's ability to borrow from its children and the Third World and the simultaneous spread of our (designed) advanced technologies, the smartphone in particular, that is "leveling" opportunity, access, connectivity, information and power throughout the globe. While this Great Leveling is a period of about 10 years, its effects will outlast us all and bring complete, wrenching, fundamental and permanent change in power, wealth, access, status and opportunity. Think of it as watching the dinosaurs go extinct and the small mammals taking over the planet. Only, in less time than a single human generation.

Please let me know. I try to fix everyone.

Two items of note:

1. I do not use IE. And so can you!
2. I am not a web guy. I'm nearing the peak of my maximal abilities in this work.

The smartphone wars, baby!

I believe we are at the beginning of a permanent transformational shift in both the economy and global power structure. My goal is to impact policies and spur action that creates new opportunity, improved access and enhanced quality of life for all. I hope you support my work.

The goals of this site are as follows:

1. To help you understand, prepare for, weather and thrive during and after the Smartphone Wars.
   
2. Serve as a resource that documents the radical, complete destruction of everything we've grown accustomed to -- and help bring understanding as to why this destruction is happening.
3. To create a community that can share best practices, tools, encouragement and wisdom to help others thrive during and after the Smartphone Wars.
   
4. Provide a ongoing source of income based on my writing on these topics.
5. Serve as a platform for longer, more in-depth writing and analysis on these and related topics.
6. To help direct public policy and technology that would better enable individuals to thrive during and after the Smartphone Wars.
   
7. Highlight the unique, game-changing technologies of the Smartphone Wars, including smartphones and the hyperlocal web, and offer examples of these in action.
8. Rank those technologies, services, devices and platforms that are battling it out during the Smartphone Wars and those that are clearly being victimized by it.
9. Provide expert advice and guidance to businesses, start-ups and policymakers during this time.
   
10. Have fun and make money.
    

Nothing. I just like saying that.

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The Great Leveling is the aftermath, the world as we will come to know it, the direct consequence of...the Smarphone Wars.

This term encapsulates the complete wrenching, fundamental and permanent change in power, commerce, connectivity, work, play and mobility that has only now begun. The spread of technology -- and the pace of this spread -- is spurring a global leveling of access to wealth, knowledge, capital, networks, resources, information and services. Such a great global leveling will have a thoroughly destructive effect on society as we now know it, to be rapidly followed by a rise in global (not necessarily American) prosperity and opportunity. In fact, there will be a number of parallel paths the destructive and creative forces undertake.

Because smartphones are becoming the core device that connects our work, social network, entertainment, communications and location. And these incredible devices are just a few short years from being accessible to billions of men, women -- and children -- throughout the planet. All the marginalized peoples, regions and industries of the planet. I also focus on demographics because the world is rapidly changing; becoming younger, more mobile.

Just as important, the meta trends that I believe are destroying, re-constructing and re-distributing wealth, opporutnity, knowledge and connectivity are *all* resident within today's smartphones. These trends include:

• Free is the new black! Your service or product can be delivered for free. Don't believe me and someone else will make it happen.
  
• Real-time is the only time. The world demands realtime and continuous feedback.
  
• Hyperlocal is hyperglobal. In a globally connected world, where you are at the time is more important than ever: Think locally. Scale globally.
• Information wants to be monetized: Data + access + analysis + aggregation + socialization = wealth.
• Values = Profits. Anyone can get anything anytime from anywhere. Counter-intuitively, this makes values-based businesses more important than ever.
• The virtual is the real. As we move the virtual into our reality – rather than the presumed opposite – opportunities for prosperity and moral peril.
• Young brown woman child. The largest market ever could be the biggest market ever.

The combination of rapidly advancing, rapidly spreading technologies with a shift in populations will, I believe, change nearly everything. The smartphone will be at the center of these changes.

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If words alone could suffice...

Brian S Hall is the President of Rawcow, a marketing and consulting firm. He has spent the past 15 years guiding telecom and Internet services firms; including marketing and product development.

From dear leader in waiting: "I primarily spend my time writing, speaking, and training small businesses, non-profits and start-ups on how to incorporate innovation, social media and a transparent, entrepreneurial mindset into their marketing and research activities. Currently, I am continuing this work while also reporting from the front lines of the smartphone wars."

E-mail: info(@)brianshall.com

Twitter: @brianshall