Using apps on your smartphone could soon be a thing of the past. That's according to executive Carl Pei, who co-founded the award-winning British technology startup, Nothing. Speaking at SXSW, the 36-year-old entrepreneur said that mobile apps as we know them are on their way out.
Mr Pei said, "I think people should understand apps are going to disappear. If you’re a founder or a startup and your app is where your core value lies, that will be disrupted, whether you like it or not. If you have a very strong brand or very strong distribution, you could delay it by a little bit, but otherwise, I would advise everybody to think differently."
As for what would replace them, Mr Pei suggests Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents will take over, handling tasks for you without needing to tap through dozens of different applications.
He's also not exactly a fan of how phones work right now, calling the current setup "boring" and essentially unchanged for two decades.
"The current way we use phones is very old school. It's pre-iPhone," Mr Pei explained. "It hasn't really changed for like 20 years, this interaction model."
As an example, if you're grabbing coffee with a friend, you must open one app to find a café and book a table, switch to a messaging service — like WhatsApp or iMessage — to update people about the plan, then pop into your calendar to set a reminder, and finally call up Uber when it's time to head out.
That's a lot of bouncing between different apps, which all occupy space on your homescreen.
Mr Pei describes this whole process as feeling like "admin work".
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
In the near future, the Nothing exec. believes you'll tell an AI agent what you want to do soon, and it will sort everything in the background to make that happen. It's not too far off from the already existing AI assistants, like the recently upgraded Alexa+ from Amazon or Google Gemini.
Mr Pei also had some advice for app developers who want to stay relevant. He's urged them to open up APIs – essentially the behind-the-scenes connections that let different software talk to each other — so that everything can be linked together in a seamless process controlled by a chatty AI agent.
Nothing, launched in the UK five years ago, designs its award-winning products in London | NOTHING PRESS OFFICE The reason? AI agents need proper pathways to work with services, rather than clumsily trying to mimic how humans tap and swipe through apps.
"The future is not the agent using a human interface. You need to create an interface for the agent to use," Mr Pei said. "I think that's the more future-proof way of doing it."
He pointed out that some companies are already trying to get AI to control apps by copying human touch interactions, but he doesn't think that's the definitive answer.
As for when you might see these changes, Mr Pei thinks smartphones will still exist in five years, but expects the operating system to look dramatically different. He also mentioned the possibility of "new devices" appearing alongside our phones.
The full shift away from apps won't happen overnight, either. He has also suggested the complete transition could take seven to ten years, largely because "people love using apps."