Qcom Amon Says 2028 Will Shift Workloads to AI Devices
qcom CEO Cristiano Amon says meaningful workloads will move from phones to AI-first devices by 2028. He says this year is the year of AI agents, and the shift puts personal assistants at the center of digital life instead of the handset.
Qcom and Amon's 2028 shift
Amon said, "The center of your digital life will no longer be the phone, it’s the agent," in an interview with Alyson Shontell for Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry. That puts a date on a change Qualcomm thinks will move from chat and search to devices that act on a user's behalf.
He also said an AI consumer device will emerge as the primary device and will house personal assistants. Within five years, he predicted those devices will be dominant and will serve hundreds of millions globally.
Smart glasses and wearable AI
Amon said smart glasses are the device of the future because they are closest to the eyes and ears. He also said pendants, pins, jewelry, and other fashionable forms of AI personal assistants will be available and worn widely in that time frame.
That is a wider device bet than a single phone replacement. It points to a market where the same assistant can live in glasses one day and in a pendant or pin the next, which is a much harder ecosystem to build than one handset line.
Qualcomm's device reach
Fortune described Qualcomm as a $200 billion company. Its Snapdragon chips already power PCs, Android devices, ear buds, cars, and data centers, and Qualcomm is partnering with OpenAI and Meta on future devices.
The practical question now is whether that chip footprint becomes a bridge into these AI-first products or just another platform for the phone era. Readers watching the category should focus on whether Qualcomm's partners ship devices that make the agent, not the phone, the main interface.
The unresolved piece is pricing and release timing for those AI consumer devices, since Amon gave a 2028 shift and a five-year dominance outlook but no product roadmap in the interview.
