Qualcomm CEO Says AI Agents Will Replace Apps
Cristiano Amon, the Qualcomm CEO, told CNBC plainly: “The phone is around the agent. The new classes of devices are going to be around the agent as well.” In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s The Tech Download podcast, Amon laid out a vision where the AI agent becomes the primary layer between people and technology, and everything else, including the apps that have dominated mobile computing for fifteen years, gets rebuilt around it. “Those agents are going to be the new app,” he said, adding that apps are “not dead” but will change fundamentally in what they do and how people reach them.
Today, retrieving a banking transaction requires opening an app, logging in, and navigating menus. An AI agent, already aware of your context and permissions, could surface that same information in a single conversational step, without the app ever opening. Multiply that across travel, calendars, shopping, and communication, and the role of the individual app icon shrinks considerably. “You’ll have your AI agent, and that AI agent is going to work across all of those applications,” Amon said.
Qualcomm is backing this vision with hardware. The company is developing more than 40 AI devices, including smart jewellery, camera-equipped earbuds, wearable pins, and watches. These devices use cameras, microphones, and sensors to provide real-world context without relying on smartphones.
Amon sees smart glasses as the category most likely to achieve smartphone-scale adoption. He says glasses fit naturally into a user’s field of view and display information without demanding full attention. Qualcomm is well-positioned for this shift, as its Snapdragon chips already power many leading smart glasses.
