SHENZHEN, China, March 23, 2026, 21:38 CST
Frost & Sullivan flagged a potential shakeup for the mobile app business in a white paper released Monday, cautioning that AI agents operating across services could sap as much as 39% of the commercial value from utility apps if these agents hit 25% user adoption. According to the firm, as users interact more with the agent than the app itself, apps risk being relegated to mere back-end functions.
The warning comes just as Chinese tech firms are shifting from talk to actual product launches. Tencent over the weekend linked WeChat with OpenClaw—the open-source AI agent framework—using its new ClawBot tool. Alibaba followed, rolling out Accio Work on Monday, building on last week’s Wukong debut. Baidu, for its part, introduced agent products last week too, pushing them across desktop, cloud, mobile, and even smart-home devices.
The stakes remain high in mobile. According to Sensor Tower, consumer spending on in-app purchases plus paid apps and games reached $167 billion in 2025. Notably, non-game revenue edged past games for the first time.
Frost calls these programs “invasive agents”—software that bypasses APIs, instead tapping operating-system permissions to read screens and trigger actions directly. According to the firm, if these agents reach 25% uptake, content and social platforms could see close to 19.5% of their commercial value disappear, while transactional apps risk losing 15.4%. That shift comes as core functions like search, comparison, and transaction start moving out of the app environment and into the agent layer. Frost & Sullivan
The firm argued the change wouldn’t generate much new value—just shuffle it around and leave developers with a bigger bill. Frost put the potential jump in mobile app development costs at around 16%, with costs for broader ecosystem governance rising more than 34%. Security issues would likely climb as well, including risks like prompt injection, where attackers slip malicious instructions into AI systems so they act in ways the creators never intended.
The proposed fix: “dual authorization.” That means agents can’t move ahead with business actions unless they’ve got both the user’s go-ahead and a separate green light from the app provider, all with thorough audit trails in place. Alibaba International Vice President Kuo Zhang on Monday echoed this, insisting any step involving payments or access to private files must get “explicit, granular permission from the user.” Frost & Sullivan
The battle for control is picking up speed, as fresh product launches make clear. Baidu’s Shen Dou, executive vice-president, said last week agents could reach “operating-system-level capability.” And Brian Wong, a former Alibaba exec, told Reuters a unified platform might pull everything—shopping, travel, logistics—“into one text box.” Reuters
Still, the transition may not go smoothly. Shen flagged that the technology remains “still not perfect” and occasionally “takes detours,” while Reuters reported earlier this month that some Chinese government agencies and state-owned enterprises have cautioned employees against installing OpenClaw on work devices, citing concerns over possible data leaks, deletion, or misuse. Frost argued that if agents move forward without establishing trust, security, and accountability, it could undermine both international cooperation and long-term credibility. Reuters
