Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Cristiano Amon delivers a keynote speech during a press event ahead of COMPUTEX on June 1, 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan. Cheng Chia Huang | Getty ImagesQualcomm introduced its new chipsets for Android phones, which will be optimized for on-device artificial intelligence and will compete with Apple’s A20 Pro in iPhones. The new chips, branded Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, will be built using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 2-nanometer manufacturing process and will be included in premium smartphones from companies including Motorola, Xiaomi and ZTE, Qualcomm said in a press release Tuesday. Qualcomm is introducing two versions of the chip, one with additional capabilities and one branded “extreme.” The launch comes as the broader smartphone industry is reeling from a global contraction due to rising memory costs that have driven up the price of finished devices. The overall smartphone market is expected to shrink by 14% in terms of units shipped in 2026 and potentially another 1% in 2027, according to Counterpoint Research. Smartphone companies have responded by focusing more on the premium tier of devices, which are aimed at consumers with more disposable income. Qualcomm is positioning phones powered by its high-end chips as an “AI hub” capable of processing AI models and producing tokens without relying on the cloud. At a launch event earlier this month, Apple introduced its iPhones as “smart personal hubs” that can perform on-device AI processing. “We’re entering this transition from what is a very phone-centric model to an agent-centric model for new experiences,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said at a launch event on Tuesday. In addition to the central processor (CPU), Qualcomm’s new chipsets also include a graphics processing unit (GPU) as well as a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle AI workloads, which can handle agents running in the background. Qualcomm also added security features to control agent access to sensitive data. During Tuesday’s launch, which was livestreamed, Amon mentioned Google’s Rick Osterloh, the search giant’s head of platforms and devices. He said Google’s Gemini will be able to understand the user’s context (whether the person is in a car, for example) thanks to the chip’s processing power and sensors. Qualcomm said that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset can run models with 30 billion parameters. “AI will now require the device to do much more than just execute commands, and will be less about navigating apps, and will be about completing tasks for you,” Amon said. LOOK: Qualcomm will build chips for Amazon
