Qualcomm CEO says AI agents will replace apps — as chip giant works on 40 new AI-powered devices

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has ignited a new front in the AI wars, declaring that 'AI agents will be the new app' and smart glasses are poised to eclipse the smartphone as the dominant personal computing device. This bold assertion comes as the chipmaking titan unveils its latest, most powerful silicon, the Snapdragon Reality Elite, and confirms it's actively developing over 40 new AI-powered devices, ranging from camera-equipped earbuds to smart jewelry, all designed to facilitate an agent-centric digital future. The strategic shift signals a fundamental reimagining of human-technology interaction, moving beyond a siloed app ecosystem towards intelligent, context-aware assistants that operate across a distributed network of wearables. This paradigm shift challenges the established order of the tech industry, where app stores and operating systems have long served as powerful gatekeepers. Qualcomm vision hinges on 'agentic AI' — systems capable of understanding intent, executing multi-step tasks across various applications and devices with minimal user intervention, and critically, processing AI workloads directly on the device rather than relying solely on the cloud. This push into on-device AI and a diverse array of wearable form factors is a calculated move to capture a significant share of the burgeoning $600 billion global AI spending wave. Rivals, including OpenAI, are also now venturing into hardware, highlighting the strategic importance of controlling these 'endpoints' for crucial user data collection and AI model training. Adding to the complexity, Amon has also been vocal about a prevailing memory shortage that could bottleneck this rapid expansion, with capacity potentially not catching up until late 2027 or 2028. Looking ahead, the immediate focus for Qualcomm and its partners will be the deployment of devices powered by the new Snapdragon Reality Elite, with XREAL's Project Aura headset confirmed as an early adopter, leveraging the chip's enhanced GPU, CPU, and NPU performance for immersive XR experiences. The company's Snapdragon START program, a toolkit designed to simplify the development of AI-powered smart glasses and other personal AI devices, underscores an effort to accelerate market adoption and build out this new ecosystem. As AI agents gain sophistication and become the primary interface, developers will increasingly shift from designing graphical user interfaces to building robust APIs that agents can seamlessly interact with, reshaping the entire software economy. This aggressive pivot suggests an accelerated upgrade cycle for silicon and software, driven by the demand for more powerful, energy-efficient chips capable of running continuous, context-aware AI directly on small, wearable form factors, heralding a future where technology adapts to the user, not the other way around.