ByteDance denies plans to launch "Doubao phones": It mainly provides AI technology to hardware manufacturers.

On August 19th, reports indicated that ByteDance is developing an AI phone called "Doubao Phone," which will be manufactured by ZTE as the ODM (Original Design Manufacturer). It is expected to be launched by the end of this year or early next year, initially for internal team testing, with no current plan for public sale.

In response to the above news, a relevant Doubao official told Jiemian News that the information is false. Doubao currently has no plan to launch its own mobile phone products. Doubao is an AI intelligent assistant under ByteDance.

The official stated that Doubao is continuously exploring the possibility of opening up its AI capabilities to various hardware manufacturers, including those in the mobile phone industry. In this process, it will conduct trials of complete solutions with some partners, but all collaborations do not involve the research, development, and launch of its own mobile phone products.

This is not the first time ByteDance has been rumored to enter the mobile phone market. In December last year, the market spread the news that ByteDance was collaborating with Nubia to develop an AI phone, and the two parties planned to launch products priced between 5000 and 7000 yuan in the third quarter of 2025. At that time, ByteDance denied the rumor. In June this year, there was news that ByteDance had restarted the Smartisan team to develop an AI phone, and ByteDance's response was still focused on exploring software solutions.

ByteDance has long been involved in the hardware field. At the end of 2018, ByteDance acquired the Smartisan Technology's Nut mobile phone team and partial patent usage rights, and established the "Xinshi Laboratory." Subsequently, it launched two generations of Nut mobile phones, new TNT monitors, speakers, and other peripheral products, but they received a poor market response. Later, the focus of the "Xinshi Laboratory" shifted to the educational hardware sector.

In October 2020, ByteDance launched the "Dali Education" brand and released its first educational hardware product, the Dali Smart Learning Lamp. However, apart from the desk lamp, many educational hardware products developed by ByteDance were not ultimately launched on a large scale in the market.

In 2021, ByteDance acquired the VR headset brand PICO for 9 billion yuan, aiming to enter the VR field. It also invested resources in developing the VR content ecosystem, such as spending 1 billion yuan to purchase the copyright of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 for VR broadcasting and producing star VR concerts. However, in recent years, both its educational hardware and PICO teams have significantly downsized.

With the rise of generative AI technology, AI hardware has become a new hot topic, and ByteDance has once again set its sights on the hardware field. In 2024, the company fully acquired the headphone manufacturer Oladance and launched the Ola Friend AI headphones integrated with the Doubao AI large model in October of the same year, which can achieve functions such as encyclopedia Q&A and voice navigation.

In addition, ByteDance has also made arrangements in the field of AI glasses. The AI technology and smart glasses company "Li Weike," in which ByteDance has a stake, launched the AI smart glasses Meta Lens Chat in April last year.

Compared with the above - mentioned hardware products launched by ByteDance, the competition in the mobile phone market is more intense, and a relatively stable market structure has been formed. Currently, companies such as Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and Apple occupy most of the mobile phone market share. These manufacturers have strong advantages in technology research and development, brand influence, user base, sales channels, etc.

Mobile phone research and development also involves many complex technologies, including chips, communication technology, imaging technology, industrial design, etc. At the same time, it requires the support of a large and complex supply - chain system. New entrants will undoubtedly face huge pressure in multiple dimensions if they want to gain a share in the market.

This article is from "Jiemian News," Reporter: Song Jianan. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.