Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon sat down with CNBC for a wide-ranging interview on “The Tech Download” podcast. He described a shift already underway. AI agents will handle tasks that once required tapping through apps. Phones stay relevant, yet they orbit around these agents rather than serve as the sole hub.
Amon put a number on the hardware push. “Right now, we have over 40 designs of those devices,” he said. The list spans jewelry, camera-equipped earbuds, wearable pins, and watches. The common thread: constant presence, real-world context through cameras or sensors, and direct voice access to an agent that understands intent and acts.
Agents step into the role apps once held.
Industry observers have watched assistants evolve from simple voice commands to systems that plan and execute multi-step actions. Amon offered a concrete example: an agent that pulls banking transaction details instantly, sparing the user any navigation inside an app. “Apps are not dead, but apps are going to change,” he noted. “Those agents are going to be the new app.”
The phone itself becomes an endpoint. “The phone is around the agent,” Amon explained. “The new classes of devices are going to be around the agent as well. And the agent will be the one that will understand human intentions and will do things for you, so there is a shift in what the center of gravity is.” Phones do not vanish. Their primacy does.
Smart glasses drew particular optimism. Current shipments sit in the “order of multiple tens of millions” per year. Amon projects that figure could reach “hundreds of millions” within a couple of years and match smartphone scale. Meta, Samsung, and others already ship models with cameras. The form factor supplies persistent vision and audio without demanding a handheld screen.
New entrants see opportunity. OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s hardware startup last year. Amon connected the dots: “All the devices that we wear become endpoints for agents, and those AI companies understand they have to win those endpoints from agents.” Data collection at device level supplies exponentially larger training sets than today’s models use. Companies want that data to build personalized experiences.
Chip architecture must adapt. Smaller, always-on gadgets demand higher performance at lower power. “Our entire roadmap is in a process of upgrade right now,” Amon said. “An entire roadmap, because I believe none of the devices we have today are prepared for the future.” Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platforms already power many handsets and PCs. The next wave targets wearables and novel form factors.
Earlier this month at Computex 2026, Amon declared 2026 “the year of agents.” He has repeated the phrase in multiple forums, including MWC and Semafor events. The message aligns with the CNBC remarks: agentic AI moves beyond prompt-and-response to autonomous action across devices. Phones, PCs, cars, and wearables become extensions rather than controllers.
Seeking Alpha summarized the same interview in near real time, highlighting the 40-plus designs and the agent-as-new-app framing. The Register covered Amon’s Computex keynote and noted the “resistance is futile” tone around agents becoming transparent yet inescapable across a user’s device collection.
Fortune reported Amon’s May comments on the same theme, framing 2026 as the point where agents go mainstream and the smartphone’s central role fades. Taipei Times quoted the Computex line directly: agents will supplant smartphones as the center of digital life. Economic Times carried parallel coverage from the Taiwan event.
Recent X posts echo the coverage. Industry accounts shared the CNBC link within hours of publication, noting the shift from app-centric to agent-centric interaction. One post highlighted the wearable designs and smart-glasses growth trajectory.
Qualcomm’s hardware bets extend beyond consumer devices. At Computex the company introduced the Dragonfly brand for data-center AI inference. That move targets the back-end scale needed when agents run hybrid edge-to-cloud workloads. The company also unveiled Snapdragon C for entry-level AI PCs and Dragonwing IQ10 for robotics reference designs.
Counterpoint Research data cited in the CNBC piece showed 1.26 billion smartphones shipped in 2025, up 3 percent. Growth has slowed. Amon’s comments suggest the next cycle will come from diversified form factors rather than another smartphone refresh alone.
The transition carries execution risk. Agents must prove reliable on complex, multi-app tasks without constant user correction. Privacy questions surface when devices carry cameras and microphones that feed persistent context. Amon acknowledged the data appetite of AI firms but did not detail safeguards in the interview.
Still, the direction appears set. Qualcomm supplies silicon for the majority of Android handsets and a growing share of Windows-on-Arm PCs. Its edge-AI optimizations give it a seat at the table as agents move from cloud demos to always-available personal systems. The 40 designs represent active customer engagements rather than speculation.
Smart glasses stand out as the clearest near-term catalyst. Shipments already number in the tens of millions annually. Scaling to hundreds of millions would require supply-chain maturation and compelling software experiences built around agents. Qualcomm’s position in wireless connectivity and on-device inference positions it to supply key components.
Apps will not disappear overnight. They will recede into the background while agents handle orchestration. Users may still open a banking app manually on occasion. Most interactions shift to natural language or contextual triggers handled by the agent layer.
Amon’s timeline places meaningful change inside the current year. “2026 is the year of agents,” he has stated repeatedly. The CNBC interview supplies the latest data point: over 40 device designs in progress, a clear view that agents replace apps as the primary interface, and bullish projections for smart glasses reaching smartphone-like volumes.
Industry coverage from CNBC, Seeking Alpha, The Register, Fortune, and others documents the same narrative across keynotes and interviews. The through-line remains consistent. Hardware diversity, agent-centric software, and silicon upgrades converge on a single outcome: the smartphone loses its monopoly on digital attention.
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