Thanks for reply.

• * I have quite long experience with Java. Yes it is resource hungry, but only at the beginning. So simple hello world application will consume much too much memory (RAM). However after this starting point adding more and more business logic does not mean that memory consumption will grow linearly.
• * The framework I mention - GWT is rather a toolbox that you write client and server side code in Java. There are no architectural constrains. However after compilation you get javascript client side and bytecode (java) server side. So there will be a lot of processing in the browser (this is another problem: since state of the browser can not be treated as trusted one, there must be validation of all the data, everything that is received from client, even if it is assumed to be calculated by your code. Then synchronization of states between server and client. Luckily I know this technology well enough that I know how to handle this.) Anyway I will use GWT only to generate client side. I know that probably writing client in pure javascript will produce better results, but I am not master in js and it would take me much longer and produce a lot of bugs. Maybe later while doing optimization some client code will be rewritten.
• * GWT support MVP as well

Yes Java and GWT are my hammers ;)

This is my favorite answer so far. Thank you for some hints like when to hire additional help or pointing out Cassandra. I agree with many other responders that I should start simple and I will. However you caught my point that I want to prepare upfront for scaling and avoid rewrite. For sure at some point I will have to hire administrator who will set up proxies/dispatchers and configure servers. I do not know if it is a right direction, but network architecture I will plan later since it will be dependent of the software I am going to use. At the moment the draft of architecture looks as follows: javascript client side (GWT), json services - server side (java/scala), cassandra on backend

I am not going to build a platform capable of serving thousands of users right out of the gate. However I do not want to end up having to do revolutionary refactoring (instead of evolutionary one) or even rewrite the application when it start failing due to too much traffic. That is why I want to prepare my application as well as I can for scaling, and of course when it starts making some profits I will hire more people and probably someone more skilled and with experience with cloud solutions.

The theft was not possible due to most stolen personal object. Ordinary thief will not benefit anything for having your phone, unless you keep your bank password in the phone. In this scenario the phones were not stolen but compromised.

You are right about https. However in the original post says: "under some limited circumstances its software will log the contents of SMS messages sent to a user's phone, but that that the contents of those messages would not be human readable. Instead, they would be in an encoded form that could not be decoded without special software and the carriers don't have access to the contents of the messages either." which is totally false. Carriers has access to content of SMS as they are delivered in polain text through their network. So this citation shows that Carrier IQ has no clue how GSM network work or they have something more to hide and do those silly attempts to calm down people with lies.