Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC that chip designers are working on more than 40 new AI device designs as they prepare for a wave of “agents” across consumer electronics.
In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s “The Tech Download” podcast, Amon shared his thoughts on the changing role of smartphones and apps, why smart glasses could be the next major consumer device, the new types of electronics coming to market, and how chip architectures will need to change for smaller gadgets.
Amon’s comments also hint at new entrants to the consumer market, which could influence the preferences of major smartphone players. apple And Samsung will need to compete as AI proliferates devices.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of experimentation with different form factors,” Amon said on “The Tech Download.”
“Currently, there are over 40 designs of these devices and a very wide variety of form factors.”
Amon said these wearable technology devices include jewelry, earphones with cameras, pins, watches and more.
“The principle is something that you wear, something that you always have on you, something that allows you to see the world around you, so you have context and you can access the agent and talk to the agent,” Amon said.
AI agent
Agent is seen as the next step after digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Google Gemini. The tech industry is betting that these agents will be able to perform longer and more complex tasks across a variety of apps and services on their devices, such as booking vacations.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon gives a keynote speech at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan on May 19, 2025.
Anne Wang | Reuters
Amon shared an example of an agent that instantly retrieves banking transaction details. This eliminates the need for users to navigate around the app and manually find information. This could mean that the way agents interact with the apps that perform their tasks may change in the future.
Apps are “not dead,” Amon said, “but they’re going to change.”
“Those agents will be the new apps,” he added.
Qualcomm is bullish on smart glasses
In the future, the proliferation of agents and the changing nature of how apps are used is likely to change the relationship between people and their smartphones, creating opportunities for the proliferation of new types of devices.
AI agents will replace smartphones as the center of our digital lives.
“Phones are going to be around agents. New classes of devices are going to be around agents as well. And agents are going to be people who understand human intent and do things for you. So what the center of gravity is will change,” Amon said, adding that phones won’t disappear completely.
Meta’s Orion AR glasses are on display during a viewing in Menlo Park, California, USA on September 26, 2024.
Manuel Orbegoso | Reuters
Qualcomm’s CEO said he is bullish on smart glasses, a product category that has the potential to rival smartphones in terms of scale. He told CNBC that smart glasses shipments are now “on the order of tens of millions of units” per year. Amon said that within “a few years” this could be “on the order of hundreds of millions of glasses and as big as a smartphone.”
According to research by Counterpoint, 1.26 billion smartphones will be shipped in 2025, an increase of about 3% from the previous year.
companies meta Samsung is developing smart glasses with built-in cameras.
AI companies enter hardware
Changes in devices could open the door for new types of companies to enter the consumer hardware market, Amon said.
Last year, OpenAI acquired io, a hardware startup founded by iconic Apple designer Jony Ive, in an effort to enter the consumer devices market.
“Every device we wear becomes an endpoint for an agent. AI companies understand that they have to acquire endpoints from agents,” Amon said, explaining why non-traditional hardware companies are getting into gadgets.
Another motivation behind new entrants into the hardware space is data. Amon said these devices collect data on a scale “exponentially larger” than that used to train AI models.
“So these companies want access to data, because it’s important to train future models and create ‘tailor-made’ AI experiences for users. ”Amon said.
As devices potentially change to smaller form factors, the chips that power them will also need to change, as they need to become more powerful and more energy efficient.
“Right now, our entire roadmap is in the process of being upgraded. Our entire roadmap, because I believe that none of the devices we have today are ready for the future,” Amon said.
