Cristiano Amon told CNBC that AI agents will become the next-generation interface, displacing conventional apps. Agents will coordinate actions across multiple services to complete tasks on behalf of the user. Qualcomm is designing new device categories around this premise: jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins and watches.
The principle is consistent. A wearable needs to be with you, see the world and provide context to an agent. The phone remains important but becomes peripheral. New devices become the focal point for agent interaction.
Amon singled out smart glasses as the most promising category, suggesting they could eventually rival the smartphone. Last year, 1.2 billion smartphones shipped. That context underscores how large the opportunity is if smart glasses can capture even a fraction of that market.
The strategic bet
Qualcomm's pivot is not primarily about technology. It is about positioning. The smartphone market is mature. Growth is slowing. Competition is intense. Qualcomm's modem and processor chips power billions of phones, but the economics of that business are compressing.
If Qualcomm can convince the market that the next computing era is agent-centric and device-fragmented rather than phone-centric and consolidated, it reshapes the opportunity. A future of 10 small devices per person is a bigger market than a future of one phone per person.
What has to be true
For this vision to work, several things must happen. First, AI agents must become reliably useful. Current agents are capable but unreliable. They hallucinate. They make mistakes. They require human supervision. Amon is betting that improves dramatically.
Second, users must accept constant sensing. Earbuds with cameras, pins that track movement, glasses that see everything. That requires either genuine utility or exceptional marketing. More likely, both.
Third, the regulatory environment must permit it. Privacy regulators have already started scrutinizing AI agents. Always-on sensing at the wearable layer will intensify that scrutiny.
Fourth, the ecosystem must cooperate. An agent coordinating actions across apps requires app developers to expose their services to agents. That is not guaranteed.
Why this matters
Qualcomm is making a strategic bet that the phone is not the future. That is a high-risk position for a company whose business is largely built on phone chips. But it is also a rational position for a company that sees the phone market flattening.
If Amon is right, Qualcomm is positioning itself for the next era. If he is wrong, he has spent years and capital preparing for a future that never arrives.
The company is betting on discontinuity. History suggests most bets on discontinuity fail. But the companies that get them right reshape industries.
