Qualcomm's Snapdragon ecosystem is expanding beyond smartphones to wearable devices. The new Galaxy device lineup unveiled at 'Galaxy Unpacked 2026' last month adopted the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform for Galaxy, the Snapdragon Wear Elite Platform and the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1. Smartphones, smartwatches and intelligent eyewear are linked on Snapdragon. Qualcomm's 'Ecosystem of You' strategy can be seen taking shape in the Galaxy lineup.

Qualcomm said personal AI is evolving into a companion that is always present in daily life, seeing, hearing and carrying out tasks. About 3.5 billion Snapdragon-based devices are currently in use worldwide. It said 61 percent of South Korean consumers rated Snapdragon as a key factor that improves the premium Android experience.

Ziadh Asghar (지아드 아스가르), a senior vice president at Qualcomm Technologies, said in a company blog post in February that the rise of personal AI means a new era of technology that moves with users, learns from them and works for them. To support that, Qualcomm reorganised by integrating its XR, wearable and personal AI business units under Asghar.

At the centre of the strategy is a new device category called "intelligent wearables". It embeds agent-type AI into devices worn on the body such as watches, earbuds, rings, glasses and pendants. The devices work together and learn and respond to a user's needs in real time. Qualcomm defines this connected experience as an "Ecosystem of You".

◆The driver of expansion is the 'chipset'

Behind this expansion is its chipset design approach. Qualcomm said Snapdragon uses a heterogeneous computing structure that combines a CPU, GPU and dedicated AI engine to boost performance per watt, handling on-device AI tasks while limiting battery drain. A low-power architecture and compact, high-performance design make it possible to put AI into wearables, which face tight constraints on battery and space. The foundation of the strategy is scalability, with a shared technology base provided across XR, wearable and audio products rather than a single smartphone platform.

The three platforms unveiled at Galaxy Unpacked show that structure. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, based on the Qualcomm Oryon CPU, secures performance and power efficiency and serves as the smartphone at the centre of the ecosystem. The Snapdragon Wear Elite, used in the Galaxy Watch9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra2, collects various signals through sensor fusion to implement AI that understands personal context. The Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 supports vision-based AI experiences in intelligent eyewear.

◆Asghar: 'Technology that moves and learns with the user'

Qualcomm also unveiled experiments beyond existing form factors. "Project Motoko", a Snapdragon-based AI-native wireless headset, combines computer vision, intelligent audio sensing and real-time AI interaction in an effort to extend headphones into an always-on AI companion. "Project Maxwell", a wearable device, combines high-performance AI processing and connectivity and is expected to support Motorola's personal AI agent "Qira".

A single thread runs through this Galaxy Unpacked event and the new projects. It is to extend Snapdragon's on-device AI capabilities, proven on smartphones, to every device around a person, including watches, glasses and earbuds. As the centre of gravity in mobile competition in the AI era shifts from performance of individual devices to inter-device connectivity and user experience, it is expected that the completeness of an AI ecosystem will become a key competitive factor in the premium market.