Qualcomm China Chairman Predicts AI Agents Will Replace Apps Within a Year

This is a striking claim from a semiconductor executive whose company's fortunes depend on where AI processing lives, so the prediction is worth weighing as a signal of where chipmakers see device architecture heading rather than a neutral forecast. The shift, if it happens, would redraw the value chain for mobile software distribution and the ecosystem built around app stores. The open question is whether on-device AI agents can mature fast enough to displace app-based behavior on the timeline Meng describes, or whether that framing is partly a pitch for local compute.