Qualcomm CEO Says The Next Thing After Smartphones Is Smartphones
The company that supplies the processors inside most flagship phones is arguing that the device category it sells into stays the center of computing, which pushes the AI agent pitch onto the phone rather than onto glasses or a new form factor.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, that smartphones will not disappear, and that what follows them is another smartphone rather than a new device category. He framed the coming period as the AI agent smartphone era, a phone that acts through an agent rather than simply running apps. Watches, VR goggles, and smart glasses had been floated as candidates for the post-phone device.
Watches, VR goggles, and smart glasses have all been floated over the past decade as the device that would take over from the phone. Amon's answer at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui is that none of them does. The phone remains the form factor, and the change happens inside it.
What he describes arriving is the AI agent smartphone, a phone whose main interface is an agent rather than a grid of apps. Qualcomm supplies chips to most of the handset makers who would have to build it.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.