The App Revolution on Smartphones: AI Agents Will Transform the Future

Nothing CEO Carl Pei explains how artificial intelligence agents will eliminate apps entirely

Take a look at that small screen in your pocket. Thousands of apps, countless icons, and a separate learning process for each one. Exhausting, isn't it?

But what if we told you all of this will soon be history? Nothing CEO Carl Pei's vision is truly extraordinary: a future where AI agents will completely eliminate apps. This isn't just technological change — it's actually a revolution that will fundamentally transform our mobile experience.

Looking at the statistics, the situation is interesting: the average user has 80-100 apps on their phone, but regularly uses only 9-10 of them. (Check your own phone, you'll be surprised.) This situation alone shows how inefficient the current system is.

In the future Carl Pei envisions, AI assistants will understand user intent and handle all operations in the background. Without ever opening an app.

Carl Pei's Bold Vision

The Nothing founder is making a truly bold prediction. According to him, traditional app stores will become history within the next 5-10 years.

What will replace them? A system where users simply express their intentions by speaking or typing, and AI agents fulfill these requests.

This vision isn't actually that far off. Systems like ChatGPT, Google Assistant, and Siri are already taking steps in this direction. However, what Pei is talking about are much more advanced versions of these — truly intent-based systems.

Analyzing this: instead of asking "which app should I open?" we'll focus solely on "what do I want to do?" And this represents a revolutionary change in how technology integrates into human life.

How Will AI Agents Work in Practice?

So how will this system function? We can think of it in three basic layers:

• Intent Recognition: Understanding user voice or text commands and extracting their real purpose
• Resource Management: Accessing necessary services to perform the requested task
• Result Presentation: Displaying the task results in the most appropriate format

Let's give an example. When you say "I want to have pizza with my friends tomorrow evening," the AI agent will:

• Check available times in your calendar
• Research pizza restaurants near you
• Learn about your friends' availability
• Make a reservation and inform everyone

During this process, you won't need to open any apps. The system will communicate with dozens of different services in the background and handle your business.

Will Apps Disappear Completely?

The answer to this question is somewhat complex. It wouldn't be accurate to say that the app technology era that has been ongoing since 2008 will completely end.

There are over 5 million apps total on the App Store and Google Play. This massive ecosystem can't disappear overnight, of course. But usage patterns will change dramatically:

• Visible apps: Apps we directly interact with will decrease
• API-based services: Apps will become more like background services
• Hybrid approaches: Some apps will work in both traditional and AI-integrated models

It seems unlikely that gaming, media, and creative content apps will disappear entirely. (After all, telling an AI agent to "take a nice photo and share it" for Instagram posting would be a bit odd.)

However, most transactional apps like e-commerce, reservations, and finance will be absorbed by AI agents.

Major Transformation for Developers

This change represents both a threat and an opportunity for developers. Current app development models will need to change fundamentally.

New focus areas will include:

• API-first development approaches
• Natural language processing integrations
• Microservice architectures
• Plugin development for AI agent platforms

Major tech companies are already preparing. Google's Bard, Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's GPT series — all are developing in this direction. Apple is also taking a similar path by developing Shortcuts and Siri in iOS.

There's also this: this transition