Qualcomm releases Android chip built for AI as memory shortage weighs on smartphone market

Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon delivers a keynote speech during a press event ahead of COMPUTEX on June 01, 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Cheng Chia Huang | Getty Images

Qualcomm unveiled its newest Android phone chipsets, which will be tuned for on-device artificial intelligence and will compete with Apple's A20 Pro in iPhones.

The new chips, under the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 brand name, will be built on 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 on Tuesday.

Qualcomm is introducing two versions of the chip, one with extra capabilities and "extreme" branding.

The launch comes as the broader smartphone industry is reeling from a worldwide contraction due to skyrocketing memory costs that have driven up the price of finished devices.

The overall smartphone market is expected to shrink 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 targeted at consumers with more disposable income.

Qualcomm is positioning phones running on its high-end chips as an "AI hub" able to process AI models and produce tokens without relying on the cloud. At a launch event earlier this month, Apple framed its iPhones as "intelligent personal hubs" that can do on-device AI processing.

"We're going into this transition from what is a very phone-centric model to now an agentic-centric model for new experiences," Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on Tuesday at a launch event.

In addition to the central processor (CPU), the new Qualcomm 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 agentic access to sensitive data.