Someone who has spent decades constructing the unseen infrastructure of contemporary life exudes a certain kind of confidence. That kind of confidence is carried by Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. In mid-June, while seated at the company’s San Diego headquarters, which resembles a peaceful university rather than a chip-making conglomerate, he made a prediction that proved more accurate than most tech forecasts: AI agents will become the new app.
That is not a line to be thrown away. The majority of high-end Android phones worldwide are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. Billions of devices are connected to 4G and 5G networks by the company’s modems. Amon is not making assumptions from a distance when he says something is on the way. He is referring to the hardware that is currently operating in your pocket.
The main point is surprisingly straightforward. You use one app to check your bank balance, another to reschedule a meeting, and a third to pay a bill by scanning a QR code. You don’t directly do any of that in Amon’s version of the near future. While you go about your day, an AI agent takes care of it by discreetly contacting apps as backend services. Apps simply stop being the thing you interact with; they don’t completely vanish. The interface is the agent. He stated, “Agents are going to be the new app,” on The Tech Download podcast on CNBC. “Apps are not dead, but apps are going to change.”
This might sound familiar. For years, the tech sector has promised to put a new level of intelligence between you and your software. It feels different now that Qualcomm is creating hardware based on this concept rather than just talking about it. According to Amon, the company is currently developing over 40 new AI device designs that span “very, very broad” form factors, such as wearable jewelry, smart pins, watches, pendants, and earbuds with cameras. All of them have the ability to see or hear their surroundings and provide context to an agent that is operating nearby.
Amon is the most optimistic about glasses out of all of these. According to him, the number of smart glasses shipped annually is already in the tens of millions, and in a few years, he thinks it could reach hundreds of millions, which would be comparable to the approximately 1.2 billion smartphones shipped annually.
That is a powerful assertion that merits some thought. It took years for the smartphone to grow to that size. The current generation of smart glasses hasn’t exactly sparked widespread enthusiasm. However, the industry is obviously heading in that direction, and the money that is currently entering the market indicates that investors are considering the idea seriously.
All of this is made more nuanced by the OpenAI perspective. Earlier this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that OpenAI is collaborating with Qualcomm and MediaTek to create processors for what is essentially an app-free phone—a gadget where AI agents take care of everything. Additionally, OpenAI paid $6.4 billion to purchase Jony Ive’s hardware startup, indicating that the AI labs are not satisfied with existing inside the devices of other businesses. Amon contended that the endpoint, which is the true prize, belongs to whoever owns the hardware that powers the agent.
However, a supply chain wall stands in the way. Amon was open about the industry’s current memory chip shortage. Manufacturers of DRAM are directing capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI data centers, which reduces the amount of memory available to smartphone manufacturers. Amon said that the situation might not improve until late 2027 or even 2028, drawing comparisons to shortages during the pandemic. Prior to a slight rebound in 2026, Qualcomm’s own stock dropped by about 25%. The short term is really challenging, but the long-term goal is ambitious.
This moment is intriguing not only because of the technology but also because of the underlying business logic. The smartphone is essential to Apple’s business strategy. Apple is in charge of the hub and everything connected to it when the phone serves as the hub. Maintaining that tightly controlled ecosystem becomes more difficult if the agent takes center stage and the phone is only one of many devices that provide information to the agent. This was not a quiet statement from Amon. He referred to it as a “horizontal” market shift, which is a polite way of saying that Apple’s competitive moat becomes much more intricate.
It’s still genuinely unclear if AI agents will actually replace the app as Amon claims. Human habits change slowly, while technology advances quickly. It’s important to keep in mind that the CEO of a chip company whose silicon would power all these agents has good reason to be excited. He is not incorrect because of that. However, the industry has previously miscalculated the gap between a strong pitch in San Diego and real behavior change across billions of users.
Even so, it is difficult to write off the developments as noise when you see how OpenAI is developing hardware, Qualcomm is creating 40 new device categories, and smart glasses are getting close to smartphone volumes. Something is changing. The next few years will determine whether the smartphone continues to be the focal point of everything or quietly gives way to whatever comes next.
