Qualcomm CEO: AI Agents Will Replace Apps, Over 40 New AI Devices in Development
Miles Bennett
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon says AI agents will become 'the new app' and the company is co-designing over 40 wearable AI devices; the shift signals a structural reset of the smartphone-centric consumer-electronics landscape.
How exactly would an agent replace an app?
Amon used a banking example: today you open an app and tap through menus to find a transaction; an agent understands the request and pulls the answer in one step.
Apps "won't die, but they will change," he said. This means → apps move to the back end, and the agent becomes the layer the user actually talks to.
In plain terms = you stop memorizing which app to open and which button to press — the agent handles all of that.
If the phone is no longer the center, what is?
Amon's own framing: "The phone exists around the agent, new devices exist around the agent — the agent is the core."
Qualcomm is co-designing more than 40 new AI devices, spanning jewelry, camera-equipped earbuds, brooches, and smartwatches.
This reflects a shift in the axis of hardware competition — from "whose phone is better" to "whose device connects to an agent fastest."
Can smart glasses really reach smartphone-scale volumes?
Amon said smart-glass shipments already run at tens of millions of units per year and should reach hundreds of millions within a few years — on par with smartphones.
For context, Counterpoint Research estimates 2025 global smartphone shipments at roughly 1.26 billion units, up about 3% year-on-year.
This means → if the forecast holds, smart glasses jump from niche gadget to mass consumer product. Meta and Samsung are already building camera-equipped models.
Why are AI companies making their own hardware?
Amon pointed to OpenAI's acquisition of io — the hardware startup founded by Jony Ive — as a sign of the trend.
Capturing the agent gateway is only the surface motive; the deeper driver is data — wearable devices will generate data "exponentially" beyond today's AI training sets.
In plain terms = whoever owns the body-worn device gets a continuous stream of real-world user data to train stronger models and build personalized AI experiences.
How is Qualcomm positioning itself for this wave?
Amon said Qualcomm's entire product roadmap is being overhauled to deliver both compute power and energy efficiency for smaller form factors.
This means → chips are no longer optimized for phones alone — they must fit glasses, earbuds, and brooches with minimal power budgets.
The open question falls on Apple, Samsung, and other phone incumbents: can they defend the device gateway in an agent-centric landscape? No clear answer yet.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.