AI NewsCarl Pei Says ‘Apps Are Going to Disappear’ as Smartphones Become More Agentic

Carl Pei Says ‘Apps Are Going to Disappear’ as Smartphones Become More Agentic

5:15 PM IST · March 20, 2026

Nothing CEO Carl Pei predicted that in the future, apps on smartphones will be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Speaking at South by Southwest (SXSW), the executive suggested that the current app-centric model is “boring” and largely unchanged for 20 years. He highlighted that using a smartphone to complete a task today feels like admin work, where different apps must be manually set to get to the final output. With the rise of agentic interfaces, he believes that soon, users will be able to tell an agent what they want, and it will be done autonomously.