In a packed session at SXSW, Carl Pei, the CEO and co-founder of Nothing, presented a stark forecast for the smartphone industry. The familiar grid of apps on your screen, he argues, is living on borrowed time.

"Apps are going to disappear," Pei stated plainly, addressing an audience of founders and technologists. He believes the core value of most applications will be disrupted by autonomous AI agents. His company, known for its distinctive hardware, secured significant funding last year by betting on this very premise: a phone where AI handles tasks so reliably that users won't feel the need to double-check its work.

Pei described the current smartphone experience as fundamentally unchanged since the Palm Pilot era, calling it "very old-school." He illustrated the friction with a simple example: arranging a coffee meeting requires a messaging app, a map, a rideshare service, and a calendar. "It's very hard to get things done on a phone," he said.

The future he envisions is one of intention, not instruction. Instead of navigating menus, a device that knows you well would simply execute your goals—booking travel, managing health, or planning social events—by orchestrating services behind the scenes. "I think it gets even more powerful when it starts surfacing suggestions for you... things that we don't even know we wanted," Pei explained.

This shift demands a complete rethinking of device interfaces. The next step isn't an AI clumsily tapping through apps designed for human fingers. "You need to create an interface for the agent to use," Pei emphasized. While he acknowledges apps won't vanish overnight, his roadmap points to a post-app world where the AI, not the user, does the navigating.

Source: TechCrunch