Qualcomm working on 40 new AI device designs
Qualcomm The chip designer is preparing for a wave of “intermediaries” in consumer electronics, CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC.
In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC’s “The Tech Download” podcast, Amon laid out his views on the changing role of smartphones and apps, why smart glasses could be the next big consumer device, new types of electronics coming to market, and how chip architectures must change for smaller devices.
Amon’s comments, which also touch on new entrants to the consumer market, may have implications for how major smartphone players are navigating this market. Apple Due to the proliferation of AI devices, Samsung will also need to compete.
“I think there will be a lot of experimentation with different form factors,” Amon said on “The Tech Download.”
“We have over 40 designs of these devices right now, and I’m telling you, the types of form factors are very, very broad.”
These wearable technology devices include jewelry, camera headsets, needles and watches, Amon said.
“Principle is something you wear, something [that] Something that is always with you, able to see the world around you, so you have context and the ability to access and speak to an agent,” Amon said.
artificial intelligence agents
Reps are seen as the next step for digital assistants like Apple’s Siri or Google Gemini. The tech industry believes these agents can perform longer and more complex tasks across a variety of apps and services on devices, such as booking vacations.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon delivers a keynote speech at Computex on May 19, 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Anne Wang | Reuters
Amon shared an example of an agent that instantly retrieves details of banking transactions, eliminating the need for the user to navigate the app and find information manually. This could mean that the way we interact with applications may change in a future where agents perform tasks.
Amon said practices are “not dead” but “practices will change.”
“These agents will be the new application,” he added.
Qualcomm is bullish on smart glasses
In the future, the proliferation of intermediaries and the changing nature of how we use apps may also change people’s relationship with their smartphones and create opportunities for new types of devices to become popular.
Artificial intelligence agents are poised to replace smartphones as the center of digital life.
“The phone is around the agent. New classes of devices will also be around the agent. And the agent will be the one who will understand people’s intentions and do things for you, so there will be a change in what the center of gravity is,” Amon said, adding that phones will not disappear completely.
Meta’s Orion AR glasses are displayed during a viewing on September 26, 2024 in Menlo Park, California, USA.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Qualcomm’s CEO said he’s optimistic about smart glasses, a product category that could rival smartphones in terms of scale. Shipments of smart glasses are now in the “tens of millions” per year, he told CNBC. “Within a few years,” Amon said, this “could reach hundreds of millions of glasses and be as large as smartphones.”
According to Counterpoint research, 1.26 billion smartphones were shipped in 2025, an increase of approximately 3% compared to the previous year.
companies Meta Samsung is developing smart glasses with a camera inside.
AI companies are getting into hardware
Amon said the shift in devices could open the door for new types of companies to enter the consumer hardware market.
OpenAI last year It acquired io, the hardware startup founded by iconic Apple designer Jony Ive, who wanted to enter the consumer devices market.
“All the devices we plug into are becoming endpoints for agents, and these AI companies understand that they need to win those endpoints from agents,” Amon said, explaining why non-traditional hardware companies are getting into gadgets. he said.
Another motivation behind new entrants to the hardware space is data. These devices will collect data on a scale “exponentially larger” than the data used to train AI models, Amon said.
“So these companies want access to data, because it is important to train future models and create “bespoke” AI experiences for users,” Amon said.
As devices potentially evolve into even smaller form factors, the chips that power them will also need to change because they will need to become more powerful and more energy efficient.
“Our entire roadmap is currently in the upgrade process. It’s a complete roadmap, because I believe that no device we have today is prepared for the future,” Amon said.
