Qualcomm's top boss has just planted a flag on what he believes will be the next big battleground in personal technology, and it is one that could rattle two of the world's most powerful companies. In a recent conversation on CNBC's The Tech Download podcast, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon declared that artificial intelligence agents are set to become "the new app," a statement that carries enormous implications for how we use our phones, watches, and wearables in the years ahead.
To understand why this matters, consider how most of us use our smartphones today. Every task, from checking a bank balance to booking a cab, requires opening a specific app, navigating menus, and manually searching for what we need. Amon's vision flips this model entirely. Instead of digging through a banking app to find a particular transaction, he explained, an AI agent would simply retrieve that information for you instantly, without you ever having to tap through multiple screens. It is a simple example, but one that hints at a much larger shift: apps as we know them could become the middlemen that AI agents quietly replace.
This is not just talk. Amon revealed that Qualcomm is already deep into development, working on more than 40 different designs for AI-powered devices. These are not limited to phones and laptops. The list includes smart jewelry, earbuds fitted with cameras, wearable pins, and smartwatches, suggesting that the next wave of AI-first hardware could look very different from the gadgets currently dominating the market. For a company like Qualcomm, which supplies chips to a vast ecosystem of device makers, this positions it at the centre of a potential hardware revolution rather than on the sidelines.
Smart glasses feature prominently in Amon's predictions as well. He believes shipments of these devices could explode from the tens of millions being sold annually today to hundreds of millions within just a few years, putting them on a growth trajectory that could eventually rival the smartphone itself. That is a bold claim, especially given that smart glasses have struggled for mainstream acceptance in the past, from Google Glass's early stumbles to more recent attempts by various manufacturers. But with AI capabilities now far more advanced, and companies like Meta already finding some traction with camera-equipped glasses, the category appears to be gaining fresh momentum.
The bigger question looming over all of this is what it means for Apple and Google, the two giants whose app stores have effectively controlled mobile computing for nearly two decades and generated billions in commissions from developers. If AI agents genuinely start handling tasks directly, bypassing the need to open individual apps, the App Store and Play Store business model could face serious disruption. For Indian consumers, who have rapidly embraced smartphones and increasingly wearables too, this shift could reshape daily digital habits sooner than expected. Apple and Samsung, both major players in the Indian market, will need to carefully reconsider their strategies as this new era of agent-driven computing takes shape.
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