The smartphone isn’t dead. But the battle to replace it is already on

The smartphone changed the world, but listening to some tech bosses lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking AI could threaten its dominance. 

The emerging debate about what comes after the smartphone is about much more than device sales. It’s about who controls the gateway to the customer, and who gets a cut of the money they spend.

And that battle has already begun. Amazon has blocked Meta’s AI assistant, Muse, from shopping on its e-commerce platform. The tech giants are already fighting over who gets between businesses and their customers.

Tellingly, Sam Altman, the OpenAI boss, has questioned the smartphone’s future. He argues that these gadgets are ill-suited to artificial intelligence.

I don’t think the smartphone is about to fall off a cliff. Apple’s iPhone pulled in $54.3 billion in sales in the three months to June 2026, a 22% rise on the year before. Unit shipments also shot up 15%, the tech analysis company IDC estimates. 

If the smartphone loses its dominance at all, it’ll be a slow burn, unlike its rapid rise, having overtaken PC shipments just three and a half years after the iPhone launched in 2007.

However, the smartphone’s stranglehold on how we access the digital world could be challenged by new technologies.

Smart glasses are jostling for pole position. But they come with drawbacks, including added weight and limited battery life. One independent tester burned through half the battery in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in just an hour of heavy video use.

And let’s face it: They look pretty dorky too.

For all the hype, they’re still David to the smartphone’s Goliath. Analysts forecast 15 million pairs will have shipped this year, a drop in the ocean compared to more than a billion smartphones.

So it’ll probably take a combination of technologies to knock the smartphone off its perch.

One is Apple’s AirPods wireless earphones. They already provide hands-free access to Siri, its voice assistant. But a recent AI upgrade now allows some users to hold chatbot-style conversations with them.

Apple is also reportedly developing AirPods with built-in cameras, to give Siri eyes as well as ears. You could look at ingredients and ask for a recipe, say, or get walking directions based on your surroundings, without pulling out your smartphone.

Facebook’s parent Meta, meanwhile, plans to launch the stand-alone device Muse Charm. It’s small enough to hang from a keychain; a screen and voice controls provide access to Muse, Meta’s AI assistant.

Muse itself has exploded in popularity since its September launch, quickly becoming the most downloaded app in the U.S.

The battle for control

The battle to control the next digital interface is likely to be fought on three fronts: hardware, distribution, and intelligence.

Apple is a heavyweight in hardware, owing to its $146 billion cash and investment pile, engineering prowess and 2.5 billion active devices. Huawei and Samsung are also contenders.

In the distribution layer, Amazon has upgraded Alexa with AI, enabling users to have natural conversations with the voice assistant, and for it to carry out tasks such as booking restaurants. Alexa is already connected to more than 600 million devices.

Google’s AI-powered search summaries reach more than 2.5 billion people monthly. And Google’s Android software powers more than 3 billion devices worldwide.

Meta is another contender. Beyond selling hardware, it could become a powerful middleman, taking a cut of transactions handled by its AI assistant, from shopping to travel bookings.

Amazon has likewise considered taking a cut of purchases handled by Alexa, even as it blocks Muse from shopping on its platform.

The third battleground is intelligence, where the frontier AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic are frontrunners. OpenAI is also muscling into hardware; it acquired Io, Sir Jony Ive’s startup, for $6.5 billion. The former Apple design chief and OpenAI are developing AI-powered devices, which could give ChatGPT a direct route to consumers instead of relying on other companies for distribution. 

The commercial prize

Hardware and distribution may be the biggest prizes of all, particularly as AI models are likely to become commodities: interchangeable. History suggests whoever cracks the next interface stands to make a fortune, at least in the medium term.

By the mid-1990s, IBM still controlled three-quarters of the mainframe market. Microsoft then built a monopoly in PC operating systems, nabbing some 90% of the market throughout the 1990s. Apple then raked in billions from iPhone sales, reaching almost $210 billion in 2025.

The wider effects are the hardest to envision. Who knew the smartphone would upend the taxi industry? Insurance, telecoms, and banking are at risk today, especially if AI agents start shopping around on customers’ behalf.

AI agents could kill the friction—the time and hassle of shopping around and swapping service providers—that keeps customers wedded to insurance policies, bank accounts, and phone contracts.

For business leaders, the biggest mistake would be trying to build the next interface themselves. Unless technology is your business, leave that battle to the tech giants. But don’t sit on the sidelines either. If AI agents become the new gateway to your customers, you could lose control of how they find, compare, and buy your products.

Companies should be probing whether AI agents can locate their products, compare them with rivals, and complete purchases for customers, without those customers ever needing to land on their websites.

The smartphone’s days are far from numbered. But companies that fail to prepare for what comes next risk ceding their customer relationships to the companies who control the next interface.