The new generation of Doubao AI mobile phones is coming. ZTE said it is advancing relevant certification work with ByteDance.

On March 31, ZTE Corporation (000063) disclosed at its 2025 annual performance briefing that the company is deepening cooperation with ecological partners such as ByteDance to jointly promote the R & D and implementation of the new-generation Doubao AI mobile phone. It is reported that the new-generation Doubao AI mobile phone is expected to be launched in the second half of the second quarter of 2026, and relevant certification work is currently in progress.

In December last year, Nubia, a sub - brand of ZTE, jointly released a technical preview version of the Nubia M153 Doubao mobile phone assistant with the ByteDance Doubao team, priced at 3,499 yuan. The Doubao AI assistant is deeply integrated into the mobile phone operating system and has system - level permissions, enabling it to understand and execute complex, cross - application instructions issued by users in natural language. For example, when a user simply says "I'm hungry, order some food", the mobile phone can automatically call the food delivery app to complete the order; or by giving an instruction to add captions to photos in the photo album and post them to social platforms, the system can call the photo album and social platforms across applications to automatically complete content generation and posting.

Bo Gang, the vice - president of ZTE, described this experience as the "autopilot" of mobile phones, which realizes the transformation from "humans operating mobile phones" to "AI helping you operate mobile phones". This engineering prototype was quickly sold out after its release, becoming the first case of an AI mobile phone with system - level deep integration of large - model capabilities in China.

At that time, the Doubao team also stated that it had no plan to develop its own mobile phones and chose to cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers in an "ecological cooperation" model, deeply integrating the Doubao large model into the operating system rather than simply adding application - layer plug - ins. ZTE provided underlying adaptation and hardware scheduling support for the Doubao mobile phone assistant. Subsequently, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2026) in March 2026, the Nubia M153 made its overseas debut as "the world's first truly AI Native mobile phone".

In addition, Fang Rong, the chairman of ZTE, further explained the company's AI layout at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2026. She revealed that the company officially launched its self - developed intelligent agent platform "Co - Claw" (internal code name "Lobster") on the first working day after the Spring Festival, and said that "there may be a 'Lobster' mobile phone this year". She further pointed out that in the era of artificial intelligence, AI intelligent agent mobile phones, including the Doubao mobile phone, can enable people to do more things rather than simply replace human labor.

It's not just ZTE. International giants such as Google and Samsung also demonstrated similar AI mobile phone concepts at MWC. Domestic manufacturers such as Huawei, Honor, vivo, and OPPO are all deeply integrating self - developed or cooperative large - model AI capabilities to upgrade system - level intelligent assistants.

Currently, the AI mobile phone market is on the verge of an explosion. IDC data shows that the shipment volume of new - generation AI mobile phones in China is expected to reach 147 million units in 2026, accounting for 53% of the total smartphone shipment volume, breaking through the half - mark for the first time, with a year - on - year increase of 31.6%. In the same period, the total smartphone market shipment volume is expected to decline by 10.5% year - on - year, and AI mobile phones will become the only growth engine in the mobile phone industry. Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that the global deployment of large models at the edge side increased by 217% year - on - year in the first quarter of 2026, and AI mobile phones have become the core scenario for the implementation of edge - side large models.

This article is from Jiemian News. Author: Li Kefeng. Republished by 36Kr with permission.