On an April day in 2007, I went to a kiosk in the mall, handed over my credit card, and walked away a few minutes later with my very first smartphone. That smartphone, a Nokia N95, was arguably the granddaddy of all smartphones, and although it cost well over a thousand dollars, I marvelled at its ability to shoot DVD-quality video, which I could then upload to YouTube (using WiFi, or its speedy 3G data connection), directly from the phone. My eyes grew wide the first time I launched the GPS application, and soon I found myself using it to find my way about Sydney's more obscure suburbs. I grew to treasure having this much power in the palm of my hand, and I've never gone back: the three handsets I've purchased since 2007 have all been smartphones, each smarter than the last.

Just this week comes an interesting statistic: from interviews with 10,000 Australians, market research firm Kantar has learned that 49 per cent of us now own smartphones - that's the largest percentage of smartphone ownership of any nation in the world. Two thirds of all new handsets sold in Australia are smartphones, so within the next few weeks, we'll tip the balance: over half of all the 20-million-plus phones in daily use in Australia will be smartphones. We have become the first smartphone nation.

This changes everything.

Fourteen years ago, when Australia became one of the first nations with a majority of its population owning a mobile, things began to change. We grew comfortable with our new-found ability to reach one another, anywhere, any time, for any reason. No one was ever late anymore, just delayed, and today we massage our increasingly complicated schedules with a flurry of text messages. The mobile has been a social lubricant unlike anything we've ever known; nearly every point of our lives has been shaped by its presence.

The smartphone took all of that - all of us - and multiplied it by the infinite capacity of the internet. Smartphones are the point where the telephone network meets, dates and marries the internet - then has a whole bunch of little app babies. These apps amplify the capability of the smartphone in weird and wonderful directions - perhaps something as simple as sharing a photograph you've just taken, or as impressive as figuring out who's singing that song you hear on the radio.

Aptly named, the smartphone adds intelligence to our lives. Consider: you walk into a store to buy a new washing machine. Which one should you buy? You can call around, and poll your friends - or you can look up the latest CHOICE ratings, then post a question to Twitter, sort the replies, and use all of that to make a more informed decision. We regularly do this when we go to dinner - whip out the smartphone to bring up a restaurant review, or a map to help us find parking. We do this sort of thing so often and so consistently something that's utterly amazing has become nearly invisible to us. Surrounded by the gentle cocoon of the intelligence provided by our smartphones, we don't get lost as much, or eat as many bad meals. Our lives are better because we carry something in our pockets that helps us tell good from bad.

And it's only just begun. The longer we carry smartphones around with us, the more uses we dream up for them. Unlike our earlier dumbphones, it's very easy to translate an idea into an app - there are millions of smartphone apps out there already, and millions more being written. The smartphone is evolving into a flexible, multipurpose tool for thinking and communication. As it grows in capability, we follow along, because our thinking is framed in part by what the smartphone makes possible. We play with our smartphones and get brainwaves, turning those ideas into apps, spreading them widely, changing the way people think, resulting in new inventions and new apps, in a wonderful cycle of innovation with no end in sight.

What does the smartphone nation look like? Earlier this week, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull mooted the idea of a 'government pigeonhole', a single point of electronic contact between the government and ourselves. Turnbull thought perhaps an email address could do the trick, but why bother issuing everyone with an email address when everyone will soon own a smartphone with their own unique telephone number? Wouldn't a smartphone nation look to the gadget in their palm, the one they already use to coordinate all of their other relationships, to manage their connection to the government? It's not at all far-fetched: cities are already beginning to deliver their services via mobile web - soon there will be apps specifically for residents of each local council in Australia, becoming our point of contact with local government.

The smartphone also presents a unique solution to the widely-acknowledge failure of Australia's retailers to establish a credible online presence. Instead of wringing our hands and whinging about the lack of e-commerce options, Australia could simply leapfrog into m-commerce. Why use a laptop to shop? You can have the entire catalog in the palm of your hand, poking and swiping to find what you're looking for, bringing your selections along to the shops - complete with a guide to where to find it in the store. Retailers have always seen e-commerce as a threat to their brick-and-mortar stores, but m-commerce is the perfect compliment, improving the shopping experience.

These two revolutionary smartphone applications are only baby steps, yet both will open our eyes to new ways of using smartphones, leading to intense bursts of creativity, as people dream up new apps to leverage the new services offered by governments and retailers. The smartphone nation is plugged in, wired up, and moving at lightspeed. As the nation first to arrive, our ideas and actions shape the future for a smartphone planet.