Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said AI agents that coordinate across multiple apps and services will replace the traditional app model, and his company is developing more than 40 wearable AI device designs to support this shift. The statement signals a potential change in how consumers interact with digital services and hardware.
In an interview on CNBC's The Tech Download podcast, Amon described a future where AI agents act as a layer on top of existing apps, handling multi-step tasks across services - a shift that reflects the growing focus on AI Agents & Automation. An example: someone wearing smart glasses with a built-in camera and display asks a digital assistant to book a restaurant. The agent manages the reservation across a booking app, payment service, and email confirmation, without the user touching a phone.
"Those agents are going to be the new app," Amon said. He added, "Apps are not dead, but apps are going to change."
New hardware for an agent-driven experience
Qualcomm is working with manufacturers on over 40 AI gadget designs, including:
- Jewelry
- Earbuds with cameras
- Pins
- Watches
The 40-plus designs point to an acceleration in AI for Product Development as chipmakers enable entirely new product categories.
"The principle is something that you wear, something [that] is with you all the time, something that can see the world around you, so you have context and have the ability for you to access an agent and talk to the agent," Amon said. That approach underscores why wearables, rather than phones, could become the primary interface.
For now, Amon is most bullish on smart glasses, saying they could eventually become as large a market as smartphones. Over 1.2 billion smartphones shipped last year, offering a scale that wearable AI would need to approach.
Privacy and platform competition
As AI agents become more common, privacy concerns will grow. The devices that host these agents will constantly see and hear the user's environment, raising questions about data handling and user trust. Amon's vision also raises the question of whether the agent era will strengthen the hold of Apple and Samsung or enable new entrants to challenge their dominance.
Why this matters for product development and IT professionals
Product developers should watch the 40-plus AI gadget designs as indicators of new form factors that blend sensors, voice interfaces, and always-on context. This could reshape how users interact with services, demanding novel approaches to user experience and on-device processing.
For IT and development teams, the rise of agentic wearables introduces fresh security and integration challenges. Employees may use these devices to access enterprise systems through conversational AI, requiring policies for data access, authentication, and app connectivity.
Researchers in AI and engineering will encounter open problems in multi-modal understanding, on-device inference, and efficient agent orchestration.
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