Doubao has made another friend?
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Author | Huang Yu
Editor | Zhou Zhiyu
In the last month of 2025, the "Doubao Phone," jointly launched by ByteDance and ZTE, has pushed the industry's battle for the next-generation super entry point to a new peak. Against this backdrop, besides ZTE, which other phone manufacturers will cooperate with ByteDance for new "Doubao Phones" has attracted much attention.
vivo, Lenovo, Transsion, and others are listed as target customers for ByteDance's cooperation efforts. However, the path to advancing this software-hardware marriage is destined to be full of uncertainties.
On December 26, news emerged that Lenovo plans to launch its first "AI Super Agent" for the global market at next year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show), positioning it as a strategic-level application directly targeting the Doubao Phone Assistant but featuring cross-device connectivity and integrated management, allowing seamless coordination among Lenovo's phones, PCs, tablets, and wearables for continuous task execution.
Wallstreetcn learned from Lenovo that indeed, Lenovo has plans to launch an "AI Super Agent," but did not reveal specific product positioning and technical route.
It's worth noting that on the same day, at the 2025 Lenovo Tianxi AI Ecosystem Partner Conference, Lenovo revealed its personal AI strategic approach is "Tianxi AI, Integrated Across Devices," aimed at evolving Tianxi AI (Tianxi Personal Super Agent) from a tool that simply responds to commands to an initial "Personal AI Twin" that has understanding, memory, and execution abilities.
Tianxi AI is a very open ecosystem, where users can choose Doubao Agent as one of the intelligent interaction entry points. Building off last year's integration of Doubao large model into Lenovo's PC-side AI assistant "Ruyi," this time Lenovo announced that with the help of Doubao's "super brain," Ruyi will upgrade from a traditional system tool assistant to an intelligent conversational comprehensive assistant.
In other words, Lenovo Group has always maintained close cooperation with ByteDance's Doubao, Volcano Engine, and other businesses.
Although a new AI Super Agent that parallels Doubao Phone Assistant may be launched, Lenovo and ByteDance may well remain in a win-win cooperative relationship.
However, the contest for the super entry point in the AI era has just begun. On one side, ByteDance is eager to expand its hardware cooperation map thanks to Doubao's accumulated technical advantages; on the other, hardware manufacturers are unwilling to be relegated to mere "pipes" and are increasing self-development efforts. This struggle for core control of AI phones is bound to be full of variables and gamesmanship.
As early as 2023, Lenovo launched the slogan "AI for All." It's worth noting that the traditional PC industry hasn't had exciting news for a long time. At the end of 2022, ChatGPT sparked a new wave of AI excitement—like a steam engine revolution—making tech giants like Lenovo see important opportunities.
Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing revealed earlier this year that Lenovo has now made the key leap from "vision" to "reality" in its AI strategy: volume production and launch of AI PCs, widespread deployment of enterprise AI solutions, deep application of AI services across industries, and comprehensive coverage of devices, infrastructure, and services in three major business sectors.
Lenovo Group has made "Hybrid AI" the strategic axis for the next decade, and will build differentiated technical paths and product solutions based on a fusion of "Personal Intelligence + Enterprise Intelligence + Public Intelligence".
Clearly, as the global PC leader, Lenovo's AI Super Agent aims to serve not only phones, but also PCs and other devices, achieving full-ecosystem collaboration.
According to IDC data, Lenovo's core phone brand Motorola shipped about 16 million units in the third quarter this year, with a global market share of 4.9%, ranking only eighth in the global smartphone market. In such an industry with obvious Matthew effects, Lenovo must seize the opportunities brought by the AI era to potentially lead Motorola in breaking through to the global market.
However, with a technical route different from Doubao Phone Assistant, Lenovo has chosen the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) path to achieve its goal of creating an "Intelligent Terminal AI OS".
Reportedly, ByteDance's cooperation approach is to pre-install AIGC plug-ins onto partner devices, enabling more hardware terminals with the core capabilities of Doubao Phone Assistant.
There have been reports that vivo and ByteDance have confirmed cooperation, and are discussing specific details. However, as of now, ByteDance and vivo have not officially announced anything.
With Doubao already securing the top spot for domestic AI native apps and showcasing revolutionary capabilities like cross-app operations and human-command simulation, ByteDance will obviously not be easily rejected by major phone manufacturers.
On December 4, Meizu Technology also extended a cooperation invitation to Doubao via its official social media, explicitly expressing, "Looking forward to in-depth cooperation to create a more user-friendly AI phone."
In response to rumors that OPPO had refused to collaborate with ByteDance, at a recent media briefing OPPO ColorOS Smart Product R&D Director Jiang Yuchen denied this, stating OPPO's overall approach remains quite open, with priority placed on meeting user experience needs—it does not reject cooperation with any manufacturer, with the main concern being the suitability of a cooperation opportunity.
After all, for hardware manufacturers, directly accessing mature AI capabilities could rapidly fill technical gaps and capture users' attention for AI phones. No manufacturer will resolutely close the door to win-win cooperation.
Nonetheless, Jiang Yuchen also noted that there's no full consensus on the cooperation model; OPPO is in talks with various companies.
OPPO views GUI Agent (the AI technology used by Doubao Phone Assistant, which OPPO is also investigating) as a backup solution for long-tail scenarios. For high-frequency scenarios and prominent internet companies, OPPO prefers to connect ecosystems through Agent-to-Agent. "Any attempt in this area with phones is high-impact, as their ecosystem position is quite special."
Jiang Yuchen believes that Doubao and ZTE's collaborative phones, as engineering prototypes, can afford to be more aggressive. However, OPPO has massive user numbers, with ColorOS globally exceeding 750 million monthly active users and the system-level AI assistant Xiao Bu also at over 170 million monthly actives. If a service launches one day and most services are unavailable the next, that's a quality incident for OPPO and simply unacceptable.
Obviously, OPPO's considerations are also concerns for most phone manufacturers when deciding whether to cooperate with ByteDance.
More importantly, the battle for the AI super entry point has just begun. For Lenovo and other hardware manufacturers, the core value of AI phones lies in mastering the device's "AI soul" and the "command authority" over the software ecosystem.
Once overly reliant on ByteDance's Doubao Assistant, hardware makers may be reduced to mere hardware providers, losing bargaining power in future business ecosystems. After all, the rise of AI Agents will reshape the business ecosystem for mobile apps, creating new cooperation models after the "Apple Tax" and "Android Tax." Whoever controls the AI entry point, controls the new business initiative.
In this battle to reshape future software ecosystem order, neither side can retreat. Whether ByteDance can resolve its cooperative dilemmas, whether hardware companies’ self-development paths go smoothly, and how internet giants’ ecosystem layouts will affect the landscape, all will be key areas of industry focus in the future.
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