[Maui, Hawaii, U.S. = DigitalToday reporter Dae-geon Seok] Qualcomm is cementing agentic AI as the direction for its Snapdragon product lineup. At Snapdragon Summit 2026 held on Sept. 22-24 (local time) in Maui, Hawaii, Qualcomm unveiled two flagship mobile platforms, followed by PC, audio and wearable platforms. At this summit, Qualcomm answered three questions: the meaning of smartphones in the AI era, what it takes to complete an agent, and how personalisation works.

Qualcomm said smartphones will remain the central device where the most user information accumulates even in the agentic AI era. It said an agent is completed when partner software is added on top of the chip to handle memory, judgement and action. It said personalisation begins with watches, earbuds and glasses worn all day that start gathering context. In line with that, Qualcomm showcased a flagship mobile platform, a partner agent stack and wearable platforms at the summit with partner companies.

◆Smartphones: still a core device in the AI era?

Qualcomm's answer was that smartphones will still remain. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon (크리스티아노 아몬) said in a keynote on Sept. 22, "Phones will not disappear," and pointed to smartphones as the central device in the shift from apps and assistants to agents. Qualcomm Senior Vice President Chris Patrick (크리스 패트릭), head of mobile handsets, cited three reasons: a "presence" that stays with the user all day, "context" that understands daily life and surroundings, and "connectivity" linking other devices, apps and the cloud. For agents to work on behalf of users, he said, they need a device where the most user information gathers, and that device is currently the smartphone.

The products backing that answer are the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Both are made on the same 2-nanometre process. They are supplied under a multi-flagship strategy in which manufacturers choose based on model tier. Patrick said, "A single specification no longer defines a flagship," and explained it as a decision tailored to a premium market split from base and ultra models to flip and fold devices.

The compute design was tuned to the model sizes demanded by agents. Patrick said, "As AI agents become more capable, they need access to larger models with stronger reasoning capabilities and richer context." According to Qualcomm, the Extreme Gen 6 increases shared memory for the Hexagon NPU to run a mixture-of-experts (MoE) model with 30 billion parameters inside a smartphone. The structure activates only about 3 billion parameters out of the total each time it generates a token. The GPU adds dedicated AI Adreno Matrix Cores, extending matrix acceleration beyond the NPU and CPU to the GPU as well.

◆What completes an agent?

Qualcomm said raising chip performance alone does not complete an agent. Vinay Sukumar (비네시 수쿠마르), a vice president in product management at Qualcomm, said in an Elite Experience session on Sept. 24, "Personalisation does not come from capability alone," adding, "Personalisation needs context." Qualcomm set a goal of a digital twin that remembers and understands the user and acts on the user's behalf. Amon cited trust and convenience as standards for whether users decide to use an agent. Security and control must rest with the user, and delegating to the agent must be easier than doing it directly.

At this summit, Qualcomm partner companies demonstrated a digital twin that implements people and agents through services. It showed memory handled by MemoriesAI, judgement by LiquidAI and action by AGI. In the demonstrations, a smartphone indexed daily life recorded by smart glasses and a laptop to answer the location of a rental car. A watch linked a detected change in gait with knee pain mentioned during a call to first suggest cancelling the next day's workout schedule. It then found a restaurant mentioned in a morning conversation and sent it to a group chat. Qualcomm said it is building an on-device agentic stack with dozens of partners across models, memory, tooling, orchestration and governance.

It also introduced a software layer. Qualcomm is expanding the Mojo and Max stacks of Modular, which it acquired, across its entire Snapdragon portfolio. Google applied Gemini Intelligence, designed to combine local models and cloud processing, to Googlebooks following smartphones. On PCs, a Microsoft Surface equipped with the Snapdragon X2 Plus will be released on Oct. 13, and Linux support for the Snapdragon X2 series will begin with Debian within this year.

◆Where does personalisation take place?

The final destination for agents is full personalisation. Qualcomm said the starting point is devices worn on the body. Qualcomm Senior Vice President Ziad Asghar (지아드 아스가르), head of XR, wearables and personal AI, said, "Smartphones will remain the hub for agentic experiences, but personal AI needs devices worn on the body." A watch gathers activity levels and heart rate, earbuds collect additional health signals, and glasses gather video information. One of these devices combines inputs and passes them to the device that will run the AI.

The products are split by form factor. The Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2, its first premium audio platform designed for personal AI, uses micro-power Wi-Fi so earbuds can connect to a cloud agent without going through a smartphone.

The Snapdragon AR1 line for AI glasses supports a 1-bit multimodal model that uses less memory. Qualcomm said a model that used 1GB of DRAM is reduced to 125MB. It plans to solve context sharing between devices through a lower software layer that is not affected by operating systems. Asghar said this multi-device experience "must effectively become an industry standard."

Qualcomm also expanded the use of wearable devices to worksites. Along with eyewear maker Inspex, Qualcomm introduced industrial safety glasses with a camera and AI. It is a method in which a worker takes inspection photos without putting down a wrench and receives guidance from a remote expert.

The answers to the three questions lead to deployment timelines. The two flagship platforms are set to be installed in flagship devices of major global OEMs and smartphone brands. AI glasses equipped with Snapdragon AR1, which Google is developing with Qualcomm, will be released within this year. Qualcomm also said it will soon disclose clinical trials and application cases for the Personal AI Health Alliance in the medical field. Sukumar said, "Agentic AI has drawn a positive response in the early stage, and we expect it to firmly take hold this year."