Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Fortune that the company is working with “pretty much all” of the major AI companies, including OpenAI and Meta, on top-secret hardware devices designed to replace the smartphone. Amon described future devices as “things you wear” like glasses, jewelry, pins, and pendants, all designed to center digital life around an autonomous AI agent rather than a phone, calling this concept the “ecosystem of you.” The interview was recorded before TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Qualcomm and MediaTek were jointly designing a custom chip for an OpenAI smartphone, though Kuo's more recent May 5 note suggests the phone chip may now go to MediaTek alone, with mass production fast-tracked to early 2027. Amon also pointed to ByteDance's December launch of the Doubao Mobile Assistant on a ZTE handset (which sold out its initial 30,000-unit run) as early proof of concept for AI-agent-centric devices.
