For more than a decade, the smartphone experience has been defined by one thing: the app grid. Social, finance, productivity, entertainment-all accessed by tapping icons. But a profound shift is underway. A new wave of AI-first devices—from smartphones with integrated large language models to purpose-built AI companions—suggests a future where apps become invisible and interaction revolves around conversation and intent, not navigation.
This isn’t just a tweak to the app store model. It’s the potential unraveling of it. If the 2007 iPhone was the dawn of mobile computing, the next revolution may be the dawn of ambient AI computing.
From Apps to Intents
Apps were once liberating. They modularized functionality, letting startups and giants alike innovate on equal footing. But for users, apps also created friction: searching, downloading, updating, switching, managing cluttered screens.
AI-first devices flip that script. Instead of tapping into dozens of apps, you issue a request—”Book me a flight to Vancouver for next Friday, prefer afternoon departures and aisle seat”—and the system orchestrates across services behind the scenes. The model is intent-centric, not app-centric.
For the user, it feels like progress. For app developers and platform owners, it’s existential: the value layer shifts from branded apps to the AI orchestrator.
Early Signals in Hardware
We’ve already seen prototypes and first-gen devices pointing this direction:
AI companions: Devices like Humane’s AI Pin (launched November 2023 at $699 plus $24/month subscription) and Rabbit R1 ($199, shipped May 2024) attempt to replace screens with voice-driven, model-powered assistants. Early reviews were brutal.The Verge called the AI Pin “the solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, but the devices demonstrate real appetite for reducing screen dependency. Rabbit sold out its first 10,000 units in a day.
Smartphone integration: Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, launched January 2024, embedded Google’s Gemini Nano directly on-device, enabling offline translation, real-time call summarization, and proactive photo editing suggestions without cloud round-trips. Apple followed in June 2024 with Apple Intelligence across iPhone 15 Pro models, running local LLMs for message rewriting and notification summaries. These aren’t just features, they’re building blocks for a future where the “app” dissolves into a system-wide AI interface.
Wearables and ambient devices: Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses with AI assistant shipped in September 2023 and have reportedly sold over 700,000 units. They layer contextual information over your field of view and answer questions via voice without pulling out a phone. AI is breaking free from app containers and embedding itself in environments.
The Platform Battle
The next decade’s platform wars won’t be about who has the largest app store. They’ll be about who controls the orchestration layer.
Apple: With a walled garden and custom silicon advantage, Apple can run advanced on-device AI while keeping privacy as a selling point. Its strategy appears to preserve a hybrid app model while gradually shifting functions into Siri-driven orchestration. The company made its move clear at WWDC 2024, announcing that Siri would gain “App Intents” allowing deep cross-app orchestration without users ever opening an app.
Google: Already migrating Android toward Gemini-powered services, Google’s model is more open—embedding generative AI across search, productivity, and Android’s core UI. At I/O 2024, the company demoed “AI Mode” for Android, where voice requests automatically trigger multi-app workflows. The challenge is balancing open ecosystem incentives with its own vertical ambitions.
Startups: Humane, Rabbit, and a host of stealth ventures argue that the real leap requires starting fresh, without app-store baggage. Their challenge is brutal: ecosystems take years to mature, and users are reluctant to abandon polished app experiences. Neither the AI Pin nor R1 has achieved meaningful traction beyond early adopters.
The winner won’t necessarily be the company with the best model. It’ll be the one that builds trust, secures developer buy-in, and creates invisible yet indispensable utility.
The Developer Dilemma
For developers, an AI-first world raises urgent questions:
Where does brand live? If users never open your app, how do you maintain visibility? Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged this tension in a November 2024 interview, noting that AI agents booking travel could “commoditize our entire interface.” The company is now building direct API partnerships with major AI platforms to stay relevant.
Who owns the transaction? If an AI assistant books a flight or orders groceries, does it route through your platform or reduce you to a backend API? OpenAI’s rumored travel-booking feature, spotted in ChatGPT code in early 2025, would bypass Expedia and Booking.com entirely, pulling inventory directly from airlines and hotels.
What happens to monetization? App-store revenue models collapse if apps aren’t user-facing. Subscription, affiliate, and service-level deals may replace one-off purchases. Some developers are already pivoting. Notion launched an API-first “Actions” product in late 2024 specifically designed to let AI agents manipulate documents without opening the app.
Developers may end up designing skills, plugins, or APIs for AI agents, much like they built websites before apps. This could democratize distribution again, but it also consolidates power in the hands of a few orchestrators.
Why Apps May Disappear (And Why They Won’t—Yet)
Why they could vanish:
Frictionless UX. Users don’t want to juggle dozens of logins and updates.
Personalization. AI can stitch together services into highly tailored experiences.
Cross-app workflows. Many tasks span multiple apps: trip planning, job search, health management. AI removes the silos.
Why they won’t (yet):
Trust and reliability. Users still want direct control and transparency for critical services like banking, health, and government. When ChatGPT briefly hallucinated bank balances during a plugin demo in mid-2024, it reinforced why high-stakes transactions need human oversight.
Regulatory frameworks. App stores and interfaces are entrenched in global commerce. The EU’s Digital Markets Act explicitly regulates app distribution; nobody knows how AI orchestration fits in yet.
Ecosystem inertia. Businesses rely on apps for branding, push notifications, and direct engagement. Starbucks isn’t giving up its app—which drives 30% of U.S. transactions—to become just another API endpoint.
The likely path is hybrid coexistence, where apps become service endpoints while AI acts as the primary user interface. Over time, many apps may fade into invisible APIs.
What Changes for Consumers
Less tapping, more asking. Expect devices where voice, text, or gesture replaces navigation.
Ultra-personalized UX. AI assistants remember context across services, tailoring everything from shopping to entertainment.
Data as currency. To unlock convenience, users must share richer personal data—making privacy and security critical. Google’s AI Mode, for instance, requires access to your location, calendar, email, and browsing history to function fully.
Hardware as a gateway. Phones, glasses, and wearables will be less about launching apps and more about hosting ambient AI.
The Next Five Years
2025–2026: AI-powered assistants expand inside existing OS ecosystems (Siri, Gemini, Copilot). Early AI-first niche devices gain attention but remain secondary. Expect more “AI phones” like the Samsung Galaxy S25 series (rumored early 2025) with even deeper on-device model integration.
2027–2028: Hybrid models emerge. Travel, commerce, and productivity apps pivot to API-first integrations with AI orchestrators. Early adopters begin using AI assistants as primary interfaces. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 40% of mobile app interactions will be mediated by an AI layer.
2029–2030: For mainstream consumers, “app usage” feels antiquated. The top 20% of daily workflows are handled via conversational AI; apps remain for specialized or regulated tasks.
By the end of the decade, the phrase “there’s an app for that” may sound as quaint as “there’s a website for that.”
The Bigger Picture: Ambient Computing
AI-first devices aren’t just about replacing apps—they’re about redefining computing itself. The smartphone once pulled the internet into your pocket; AI is now dissolving the interface altogether, creating a world where the system anticipates needs, mediates services, and blends into daily life.
This is the promise and the peril: convenience balanced against control, seamlessness balanced against dependence. If apps made us power users of the internet, AI-first devices may make us power users of reality—or just passive consumers of whatever the algorithm serves up next.
