In Smartphone Inc., you become a CEO of one of the largest smartphone-producing companies in the time when smartphones were only beginning to conquer the world. Research technologies, develop your factory, build your worldwide office network, and outprice your competitors to become the most profitable and successful smartphone company in the world.

Smartphone Inc. is an economic simulation Eurogame. Over five rounds, players program their decisions about price, production, research, and expansion. The game features a unique mechanism of planning, which combines patching mechanisms with bidding and action selection. Each of the rounds consists of eight simple phases: planning, pricing, production, development, research, expansion, selling, and profits.

In the planning phase, all players simultaneously make decisions for the next year by overlaying ("patching") their two plan cards and all of their development tiles. The actions they plan on their cards and tiles in this phase will determine what actions they can perform during all of the later phases.

In the pricing phase, players change the price they charge for their smartphones based on their plan. A lower price helps to go earlier and sell more smartphones on the market, but a higher price, while risky, helps players to earn more money.