Author: Qiu Xiaofen
On January 26, at Tencent's annual meeting, Pony Ma rarely commented on the Doubao phone—he explicitly stated that Tencent opposes transmitting users' phone screens to the cloud, as it is "extremely insecure and irresponsible."
In response to this comment, Doubao Phone quickly issued a statement, saying it would strictly comply with user authorization and that cloud processing follows the "no storage, no training principle."
Ma Huateng's evaluation also revealed the previous hidden pain of Doubao Phone. In December 2025, ByteDance's Doubao Phone experienced a severe "siege" just one day after its release—its AI Agent, due to touching the traffic and core data of major super apps, triggered a joint blockade by internet companies including Meituan, WeChat, and the Alibaba family, nearly paralyzing its AI functions.
Despite this, the story of Doubao Phone is not over yet.
According to exclusive information obtained by "Intelligent Emergence," ByteDance launched the official version project of the Doubao Phone Assistant at the end of 2025, with the new device expected to be released in the mid-to-late second quarter of 2026.
Supply chain sources said that ByteDance has high expectations for the new device, significantly higher than the first-generation test version. In terms of model, the second-generation Doubao Phone still cooperates with ZTE Nubia, with ZTE responsible for hardware and Doubao responsible for AI.
In this regard, ByteDance has not yet responded.
How to avoid continued "siege" will be a key issue for the second-generation hardware product.
"Intelligent Emergence" learned that the Doubao Phone team has been negotiating with most mainstream application manufacturers in the past, and has currently reached agreements with some internet companies (ride-hailing, food delivery, ticket booking, etc.) for some common permissions.
Negotiating permissions does not mean that Doubao Phone will abandon the original system-level GUI Agent route. (Author's note: The essence of Doubao Phone's GUI Agent route is to obtain high-level permissions of the mobile operating system, allowing AI to understand the phone screen like a human and simulate click operations to achieve the effect of "automatically operating the phone," thus eliminating the need for application manufacturers to open API interface authorization.)
A mobile phone industry insider analyzed to "Intelligent Emergence" that this is also a bargaining strategy—when the first generation of Doubao Phone did not have the bargaining chips to negotiate with internet companies, it first used the system-level GUI Agent route to create a sample to bypass the interface authorization problem.
In addition to developing its own hardware, Doubao Phone is also trying to walk on two legs—engaging in different forms of cooperation with a number of mobile phone manufacturers. "Intelligent Emergence" learned that the cooperation models negotiated by Doubao Phone with mobile phone manufacturers are mainly divided into two categories:
For major mobile phone manufacturers with well-developed self-developed ecosystems (models, computing power, entry points, OS), such as OPPO, vivo, and Honor, Doubao's cooperation model with them is still focused on technical cooperation, including model integration and calling, or cooperative modular products such as "Doubao Input Method."
These mobile phone manufacturers will never give up their core entry points, and the application layer will still retain their respective voice entry points in the future, such as Little Bu Classmate (OPPO), Blue Heart Little V (vivo), etc.
However, for domestic mobile phone manufacturers with low market share, classified as "others," such as Transsion, Meizu, and Lenovo, Doubao Phone adopts a more aggressive negotiation strategy—directly embedding a Doubao AI entry point in their phones, similar to the "Seres-Huawei" cooperation model.
A ByteDance insider said that in terms of business model, mobile phone manufacturers need to pay technology licensing fees and AI service subscription fees to them.
From cooperating with Nubia to create a phone sample, to pulling together a group of mobile phone manufacturer allies in the form of software entry points, Doubao's breakthrough strategy in the mobile phone field is also clear.
Ren Ju, founder of the device-side intelligence manufacturer "Wanxiang Zhiwei," analyzed to "Intelligent Emergence" that the reason why the first generation of Doubao Phone was "besieged" so quickly was that the user base was not large and it was tightly bound to a specific Nubia model. "It was easy for internet companies to block it—just target the model and carry out small-scale, targeted sniping."
He said that if the Doubao Phone Assistant enters a large number of phones in the form of software, is not bundled with specific models, and the user base increases, "siege" will not be so easy.
And for a large number of "others" mobile phone manufacturers, the addition of Doubao AI also provides a possibility of "surrounding the cities from the countryside."
The biggest feature of the Chinese mobile phone market in recent years is that the market share of the six major mobile phone manufacturers (Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Apple, Honor) is almost highly similar, basically floating around 15%, with a large number of "others" sharing the last 5% of the survival space.
Under the premise of soaring memory and a declining overall market, the survival situation of long-tail mobile phone brands in China is already quite difficult.
These mobile phone manufacturers have also publicly expressed their attitudes towards Doubao. For example, Meizu has publicly stated that it "looks forward to the opportunity for in-depth cooperation"; Lenovo's Yang Yuanqing's attitude is more ambiguous. When talking about Doubao Phone, he said, "Hardware manufacturers and model manufacturers have a complementary relationship."
It is worth noting that in addition to mobile phones, Doubao is also making multiple bets in terms of hardware forms. This year, we may see a range of hardware equipped with Doubao, such as Doubao glasses and headphones.
A supply chain person cooperating with ByteDance's glasses team told "Intelligent Emergence" that ByteDance's glasses team is "one of the largest glasses teams in China", and it even has a R&D team in North America "used to accommodate people poached from Meta."
"Intelligent Emergence" learned that ByteDance's glasses had three different teams participating in the industrial design环节, finally settling on two structural directions—one is an AI glasses with a display, to be released in Q4 2026; the other is an AI glasses without a display, to be released in Q1 this year (most likely after the Spring Festival).
Synergy with ByteDance's other mature businesses, including Doubao, will be the main selling point of these new hardware. A person who has seen ByteDance's glasses told "Intelligent Emergence" that ByteDance's AI glasses will focus on all-weather photography. Not long ago, media also revealed that ByteDance's first-generation glasses are mainly launched for资深 users of Doubao.
In addition to glasses, "Intelligent Emergence" learned from the supply chain that ByteDance is also developing an AI headphone project with a camera.
A glasses industry insider analyzed to "Intelligent Emergence" that whether it is glasses or headphones, they are currently "appendages" of mobile phones, and AI phones will bring great imagination space to other categories.
The above person gave an example—imagine that in the future, if you want Doubao Phone to do something for you, you don't need to pick up the phone; just talk to the glasses or headphones, and after the phone processes it, you will directly hear the "mission accomplished" prompt from your ear, truly freeing your hands.
In fact, judging from Doubao's various hardware actions, Doubao's ambition is not simply to make a phone, but to make the agent with Doubao's model capability become the standard configuration, even the entry point, of all future hardware.
And when users get used to a more convenient human-computer interaction, the ecological stickiness formed thereby is far more valuable than creating a certain piece of hardware.
As the Doubao model sinks into hardware, a similar narrative is also happening overseas. Doubao's competitor Google has also been actively deploying Gemini into a range of hardware devices this year.
To this end, Google not only cooperated with its former "archenemy" Apple to build a new Siri, but is also trying to use Gemini in a range of AI glasses and embodied intelligent robots.
An informed person told "Intelligent Emergence" that in order to布局 overseas, Doubao Phone has recently been negotiating with mobile phone manufacturers including vivo to promote the installation of "Doubao Phone Assistant" in their overseas models, but specific details are still under negotiation.
For ByteDance, in terms of key elements such as models, talent, computing power, and data, it is already the top配置 in China.
The only thing ByteDance lacks is a hardware entry point that centrally outputs these capabilities—and Doubao is a suitable carrier. As an AI application with over 100 million DAU, Doubao has accumulated a large amount of Chinese user data and has considerable brand effect.
"When the final outcome of hardware in the AI era is not yet clear, aggressive ByteDance can fully explore同步,不计 resource investment," an industry insider told "Intelligent Emergence."
