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

Mar 20, 2026 - 12:00
Carl Pei Says ‘Apps Are Going to Disappear’ as Smartphones Become More Agentic
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.