• There Be Dragons Snapping
  • Musing Around the Amazon
  • Googlebooked

There Be Dragons Snapping
Qualcomm hosted its yearly Snapdragon Summit for insiders, journalists, creators, and business partners in Hawaii this week. Over multiple days there are multiple hours of presentations and talks covering all facets of mobile computing. Like many other technology companies, Qualcomm envisions a future where apps are no longer the center of our computing universe, but instead agentic AI tools manage our lives, and we interact with those agents wherever we are via natural speech and vision processing. Qualcomm says 70% of "people" want access to a personalized agent and 66% want to be able to access that agent across different platforms. Unlike companies that don't manufacture phones and/or aren't involved in the infrastructure required for manufacturing phones, Qualcomm does not see AI tools as disintermediating or obviating the smartphone but instead posit that the phone will be the central hub that holds all your personal data and manages all the tools you use to bring order to your life. Qualcomm is partnering with MasterCard to build an agentic commerce platform where Qualcomm supplies the AI infrastructure that lives on the phone and MasterCard provides the payment layer and requisite security frameworks. The idea is that your phone, armed with information on your shopping preferences, can act on offers and with your approval, can complete transactions for you without you having to do any of the discovery or research. Agentic commerce is a common refrain sung by the big tech companies to show us how AI tools can benefit us; Google showed off shopping features at their Google I/O conference earlier this year and many other agentic tools are presented as being able to shop for you across many sites on the internet. AI tools in an enterprise context seem to be fairly well known and understood; generating code, streamlining communications., and improving process efficiency are key areas in the workplace. But for the average consumer, companies are still trying to figure out how we might want to use AI. So far, other than shopping, the most prominent use cases are managing files and emails and helping us keep track of our daily activities.

Qualcomm also uses this conference to unveil new hardware and they revealed the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite processors that will show up in mobile phones and computers over the next year. The mobile CPU pushes past the 5.0 GHz milestone for the first time and the GPU is said to deliver an Unreal Engine 5 level of performance to push mobile gaming forward. And since the phone will be the center of our AI universe, it's important that the phone can handle advanced AI processing, so the new processor has faster inference processing and the ability to run local models as large as 30 billion parameters on device. The onboard image signal processor (ISP) can now carry 16 bits of data and can process 8K video at up to 60 frames per second. Qualcomm says the new processor can deliver 85% more performance while using 20% less power. The new chip supports WiFi 8 and ultra-wideband to improve connections with other devices.

Chinese technology giant Xiaomi is first out of the gate with a phone with the new Snapdragon 8 Elite platform but there will be many other devices to come over the next year that will sport this new platform. The key will be to see how well these perform against offerings from Intel, Mediatek, and Apple. As mobile computing increasingly becomes the center of the digital universe, it will be important to have systems that support the growing needs of on-board AI and enhanced connectivity and interactivity with wearables and other accessories.

Musing Around the Amazon
While Qualcomm took time this week to inform us that agentic commerce is the future, Amazon took the step this week of blocking Meta's new blockbuster hit agentic AI tool, Muse. It says that Meta did not inform Amazon in advance that it would enable its tool to browse and shop on Amazon and Meta was not given authorization to access customer accounts and complete transactions on their behalf. Furthermore, Amazon says that Muse does not identify itself as a bot as it peruses the site and that its belief is that bots should identify themselves and give merchants an opportunity to opt in or out. And as a digital cherry on top, Amazon indicates that it considers customer account data to be sensitive and accessing it without authorization is a violation of its conditions of use. Meta's retort is that Muse works in a secure virtual environment and operates at the behest of the user, who must approve transactions before they are completed.

You probably know by now that both companies are talking past each other because the issue isn't really about terms of use or platform security. This is all about turf. Amazon sees its site and its users as its domain and does not want to cede control of it to some other player, especially one as unpopular (and as untrustworthy) as Meta. Customer data, shopping habits, purchase history - this is all data that Amazon believes it owns and would prefer to mine and monetize in peaceful isolation. An agentic tool like Muse could perhaps benefit the user by accomplishing shopping tasks on the Amazon website, but it could also just as easily take the information from Amazon's site to inform and complete a transaction on another site based on better pricing or availability. Amazon has spent much time researching and developing a shopping platform that blends its marketing/advertising arms with its logistics and fulfillment arms to provide an experience that creates a powerful financial ecosystem from which it reaps the most benefit while also providing a familiar and trusted platform for the customer. Amazon does not want to be disintermediated from its own data, and more importantly, Amazon does not want to be just one other shopping destination on the internet. Amazon wants to be THE shopping destination on the internet, and anything that looks like it could erode their market share and big player advantage is a threat to be addressed with little mercy.

Right now, Muse is blocked on Amazon and Muse users will need to direct their shopping attention elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a door that Amazon left a tiny bit ajar for Meta to initiate conversations with Amazon and make any necessary adjustments to Muse to live into Amazon's conditions of use. If somehow Meta can amend Muse so that it doesn't break any of Amazon's terms and can demonstrate its security, then theoretically Amazon would have few clear remaining complaints.

If Meta pushes on this - because agentic commerce is clearly not going away - Expect Amazon to not go down without a fight. Where this goes depends entirely on whether or not Meta feels like fighting.

Googlebooked
Last week, Google held a press event for their new computing platform Googlebook, which is in fact just Android with some added functionality to make it feel more like a desktop operating system. For whatever reason, those that attended the event weren't free to talk about what they saw until pre-orders opened on Monday. Since then, we have learned a bit more about the platform and the new hardware that is currently available. Android on Googlebooks looks very familiar. Much like what we have seen with the latest iteration of Samsung DeX, there are multiple desktops and apps can be opened in windows and resized just as you would expect. Google has given the platform a version of the Chrome browser with full extension support, plus full Linux support as well. The hardware that is available skews toward the higher end with a base configuration that includes at least 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, 14+ hours of battery life, multi-color Glowbars, fingerprint and/or facial recognition for security, and either Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite processors. Machines are offered by Dell (XPS Googlebook, starting at $1299), ASUS, (Googlebook 14, starting at $1299), HP (Googlebook 14, starting at $1299), Lenovo (Googlebook 15, starting at $1099), and Acer (Googlebook 14, starting at $899). All of the machines available for pre-order have at least two ports, which immediately sets them apart from nearly every Android tablet available on the market. A couple models even offer headphone jacks.

In addition to the premium hardware, Google has added a few other features that are unique to Googlebooks. The Continue On feature allows you to pick up on your Googlebook where you left off on your phone and vice versa, and there is also Cast My Apps to provide the ability to broadcast certain apps from your phone to your laptop. You will also be able to access the files on your phone from your laptop so you can continue working on files without having to transfer them back and forth. Another feature called Magic Pointer allows you to shake the mouse to bring up Gemini to take action on whatever the pointer is focused on. Google is updating the Play Store to better indicate the best platform for an app experience. Apps that will perform best on Googlebook will be tagged as working well on desktop while other apps may be tagged as performing better on the web. It isn't immediately clear whether apps that are already optimized for tablets will also be labeled as performing well for desktop or if there will be a class of apps that won't be tablet optimized or may perhaps not even run on tablets but would work fine on a Googlebook. If so, I imagine this would be more of a hardware limitation than a screen limitation as there are plenty of Android tablets with screens 12" or larger and some have fairly powerful processors, like those from Samsung's Galaxy Tab S line. But as more Googlebook hardware comes out in different form factors, it does begin to raise questions about the value proposition for a large Android tablet. Google is promising 10 years of platform updates and they will provide the updates directly just as it has been with Chromebooks. Anyone who has owned an Android tablet knows that timely updates can be an issue even if the manufacturer has pledged a certain number of years of support. There have been leaks of future Googlebook hardware in a 2-in-1 form factor and it will certainly raise the question for many of why they should buy a big Android tablet from Lenovo or Samsung when they can buy a Googlebook 2-in-1 and know they'll get the security and platform updates from Google at the same time as everyone else.

This presents an interesting position for Samsung; they are not releasing a Googlebook at this time and all indications are that the release of the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra will be only a few days after the first Googlebooks ship to those who pre-ordered them. Samsung surely wants to continue selling their tablets; they have put a lot of time and money into making them compelling devices with features and capabilities that few other Android tablets share. Will Samsung ever make a Googlebook? And if so, what would it mean for the S line of tablets? In the meantime, I've put my plans to upgrade to a Tab S12 Ultra on hold and have pre-ordered the Acer Googlebook convertible which has USI 2.0 pen support and might perhaps be a decent replacement for my Tab S11 Ultra. Samsung can't really afford for many other people to do the same, so they will quickly have to determine their position and placement in this new Android world.

I pre-ordered the Acer, so expect to hear and see more in the near future.