Some of the companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence want phones that can run very large models within two years, according to Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon. “By 2028, I need to make sure that I have the ability to run at least a hundred billion parameter model into a phone,” Amon said, describing what those companies are telling the chipmaker.

Amon made the comments on Sources, the podcast hosted by Alex Heath. Heath recorded the interview at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Maui and published it on Oct. 8. Amon said the companies want that model “running kind of all the time.” He declined to name them.

Heath asked whether AI companies were already turning their attention to phones. Amon said they were. “AI companies are starting to do phones,” he said. He pointed to ByteDance’s Doubao phone, made by Nubia, as an early example from China. “There’s more coming,” he said.

Heath noted that personal agents such as Muse and Grok Bot run their browsers on virtual machines in the cloud rather than on the handset. Amon agreed that some work will stay in the cloud, but said some tasks have to happen on the device. The phone holds a user’s personal context and sensor data, he said, and it also holds the apps an agent needs to act on the user’s behalf. Amon said the launch of OpenClaw made the case for an AI smartphone clear: an agent that plans, routes tasks and acts for its owner.

“Humans are not going to go travel to a data center, ring the bell and say, ‘Give me some AI.’”

The same conversation turned to the business headwinds facing handset makers. Amon said memory prices have risen five to six times. As a result, the smartphone market is down 20% this year. Mid-range and cheaper phones have taken the hardest hit, while premium models have held up better.

Amon rejected the idea that weak sales reflect a lack of interest. “It’s not a demand problem,” he said, adding that there is now pent-up demand. He said buyers purchase about 1.2 billion phones a year, and that the market remains smaller than it was in 2019. Research firm Omdia has said phone prices will stay high even after the shortage ends.

The memory issue drew a quick response on X. Elon Musk replied to a post about Amon’s remarks with a single line: “Problem is RAM supply.”

Amon also named smart glasses as the wearable he is most bullish on. He put the market at 50 million to 60 million units and said about 40 designs use Qualcomm chips. The company launched new glasses platforms at the summit.

On the data center side, Amon discussed Modular, the software company Qualcomm bought from Chris Lattner, the creator of Swift. Amon said Qualcomm will make the platform open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and that it will work with any chip. “We will celebrate every single Modular deployment on Nvidia, on AMD, on Broadcom, on any other chip, on Intel.”

Looking further out, Qualcomm plans to demonstrate 6G technology at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Amon expects early deployments in 2029 and 2030, with broader rollout coming after 2030.

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