Last week we explored a structural shift that
is quietly forming beneath our fingertips. Mobile phone operating systems are
evolving from passive launchpads for apps into active orchestration layers for
intent. With multi-agent AI embedded at the OS level, the unit of interaction
begins to move from tapping icons to stating outcomes. Apps recede into the
background, interfaces become conversational, and software starts to look like
plumbing.
Technically, that trajectory is plausible.
Economically, it is efficient. When friction collapses, layers compress. But
there is a deeper force that will determine how fast this becomes real and who
gets to profit from it.
The app economy is not merely a design
paradigm. It is one of the most profitable economic architectures ever
constructed. And profitable architectures do not quietly dismantle themselves.
The 30 percent engine
Apple and Google didn’t just create app
stores. They created a global tax system on digital commerce, embedded directly
into the operating system. The famous 30 percent commission became the symbol,
but the more important story is the scale of the underlying river of
money.
In 2024, global consumer spending in mobile
apps and games reached roughly $127 billion, covering in-app purchases and
subscriptions across Apple’s App Store and Google Play. This does not include
ancillary revenues tied to app ecosystems such as advertising, IAP add-ons, or
extended services tied to those interactions. Independent analysis estimates
that Apple alone collected more than $90 billion in App Store revenue in 2024,
dwarfing many standalone SaaS businesses. For Google, Play Store commissions
represent a similarly lucrative enabler inside Android’s broader ecosystem.
App stores transformed operating systems into
marketplaces. They converted distribution control into recurring, high-margin
revenue. They turned software platforms into economic gatekeepers embedded in
the very foundation of mobile experiences.
If OS-level agents reduce reliance on
traditional app interfaces, the transaction choke point shifts. And when the
choke point shifts, the economics must shift with it. That transition will not
be accidental. It will be engineered.
Commission migration
As intent becomes the interface, commissions
will not simply evaporate, but are likely to attach to the new chokepoints. I
can’t believe that platforms will surrender their economic leverage. The rent
will move upstream and be reattached to whichever layer brokers transaction
intent most effectively.
Search engines monetized ranking. App stores
monetized distribution. Agentic operating systems will monetize orchestration.
And platforms will find new ways to capture value. How they do this is still to
be determined: payment-rail fees, identity certification charges, routing
premiums for preferred vendor options, metered AI compute usage, and
revenue-sharing arrangements tied to agent intermediated orders. Whatever the
mechanism, I expect it will be attached to the layer that touches the
consumer’s declared intention, not the app.
That is how platform economics evolve.
Samsung has everything to gain
This is where I think the S26 release makes
the story truly provocative. Samsung has long been a colossus in mobile
hardware, but missed the capture of App Store economics. In 2024, Samsung
shipped more than 220 million smartphones worldwide, maintaining its status as
the largest global smartphone vendor, ahead of Apple. In recent quarters,
Samsung has repeatedly held roughly 20 percent share of the global market,
regularly leading all OEMs in smartphone volume.
>> Tom Snyder: Galaxy S26’s agentic AI could hollow out the app economy
Put plainly, Samsung’s hardware footprint
dwarfs every other smartphone maker. Hundreds of millions of devices with
Samsung branding are active across the world right now. Yet Samsung has never
commanded the app ecosystem the way Apple and Google have. Samsung makes the
phones, but it has not controlled the toll booths of digital commerce that
ride on top of them.
Bixby, Samsung’s AI layer, is at best an
afterthought. Samsung Pay, while widely supported, never matched Apple Pay’s
integration depth or volume. The operating system layer — where app stores and
intent lives — has been effectively owned by others.
That is poised for change.
Samsung’s incentive structure is different. It
is not defending a legacy commission model. It is hungry for its place at
the center of digital value capture. And since Samsung doesn’t have app
store revenue to replace, they are incentivized to change a paradigm that Apple
or Google may be reluctant to give up.
If OS-level agentic interfaces become the
dominant interaction paradigm, Samsung’s hardware dominance becomes a strategic
advantage. Instead of defending an app store cut, Samsung can push beyond
the app store paradigm altogether, building an intent layer that does not
merely facilitate volume but controls it.
Samsung now has the scale in hardware shipment
and user base to make such a play credible. It produces more phones than any
other manufacturer and reaches over a billion smartphone users worldwide,
representing a massive installed base whose data, identity, and transaction
potential could be orchestrated directly through an agentic OS layer that
Samsung champions.
Hardware is the quiet superpower
The data economy is built on real-time data
streams. Real-time streams originate in hardware: GPS coordinates, camera
feeds, microphone inputs, biometric authentication, motion sensors, and
environmental data. Software interprets these signals, but hardware
generates them.
Agentic AI accelerates software abundance.
When code can be generated on demand, workflows assembled dynamically, and
integrations orchestrated reactively, the scarcity of defensible apps and fixed
interfaces dissolves quickly. Interfaces become utilities. Platforms become
agents.
In that environment, three assets grow scarce
and valuable:
●
Ownership of hardware that
generates data,
●
Identity and trust systems that
secure transactions,
●
And the intent routing layer that
translates desire into execution.
If you control those, you control the flow of
digital economics. Samsung already owns the first, has access to the second,
and is positioned to contest the third at scale.
Ownership of the intent layer
The shift ahead is not fundamentally about
whether apps disappear. It is about who controls the layer that translates
intent into action. That layer is the gateway to transactions, routing choices,
market visibility and ultimately to who captures economic value in the data economy.
Apple and Google will defend their existing
ecosystems, attaching new forms of tolls to the agent layer. But Samsung enters
the game with an upside that neither Apple nor Google fully enjoyed at the same
stage: it does not need to protect a legacy fee base. It can invent the toll
booth for the agent era.
The technical capability to move beyond apps
is now emerging and economic realignment is inevitable. The strategic
battleground is defined. The question is not who builds the next great app, but
who owns the intent layer, and therefore who quietly directs the flow of value
across the next chapter of digital interaction. The S26 plants a stake in the
ground that the market is shifting. If users choose to communicate intent
directly to the OS (via AI), then I expect that stake will hold.
