Author | Wuzi

The focus of the AI competition is rapidly changing. One day, tech giants are vying for super entry points; the next, AI office suddenly becomes a key battleground.

In March 2026, Tencent decided to fully bet on office AI agents, gradually directing resources toward WorkBuddy. Driven by factors such as first-mover advantage, aggressive promotion, and rapid iteration, WorkBuddy achieved 20.97 million monthly visits in just five months, ranking first in the Chinese market.

Seeing Tencent take the lead in the AI office space, internet giants like ByteDance and Alibaba swiftly adjusted their AI business focus.

On July 30, ByteDance announced that its Feishu product team would be merged into Doubao, while the GTM (Go-to-Market, Sales, Customer Service) team would be integrated into Volcano Engine. Similarly, Alibaba consolidated three products—QoderWork, Wukong, and MuleRun—and launched the AI Agent office product Qianwen Office on August 3.

The competition among tech giants around AI office signifies the end of the battle for super entry points. Correspondingly, AI smartphones, as key carriers of these super entry points, are no longer the focal point for tech giants. Positioned as productivity tools, PCs—once overlooked in the mobile internet era—have instead become a fiercely contested market.

This raises questions: Why have smartphones, as mass computing platforms, struggled to be reshaped by AI technology? Why are PCs more suitable for Agent deployment? Can traditional smartphone forms continue to adapt to the AI era?

01 Three Years After Birth, AI Smartphones Haven’t Unlocked an 'iPhone Moment'

As early as around 2023, following the AI revolution sparked by ChatGPT, smartphone manufacturers began actively investing in AI smartphones. Liu Zuohu, OPPO's Chief Product Officer, stated, 'The future direction is clear: AI will be the most critical. If we don’t deploy large models, we’re finished.'

Following the evolution of AI technology from large models to Chain of Thought (CoT) and then to Agents, AI smartphones have undergone three main development stages.

First, they incorporated isolated AI technologies, supporting fragmented AI functions like AI photo editing, AI writing, and real-time call translation. Later, system-level multimodal AI emerged, with AI shifting from standalone apps to the system layer, integrating tools like system settings, galleries, and notes. Currently, AI smartphones have evolved into the Agent stage, where users issue commands, and the phone’s AI assistant directly executes specific tasks.

Source: Counterpoint Research

With gradually improving functions, AI smartphones have successfully captured the market, becoming a mainstream choice for consumers. Research by Counterpoint indicates that AI smartphone shipments are expected to account for 45% of the market in 2026, up 9 percentage points year-over-year, and further climb to 52% in 2027, surpassing traditional smartphones.

However, it’s important to note that AI smartphones haven’t attracted a massive wave of user upgrades or generated significant incremental market growth, as seen when smartphones first emerged.

Data from Gartner reveals that in 2010—three years after the iPhone’s launch—global smartphone sales reached 1.6 billion units, surging 31.8% year-over-year. Smartphone sales alone jumped 72.1%, accounting for 19% of the overall phone market.

Source: Counterpoint Research

In contrast, while AI smartphones are now three years old, the smartphone market faces significant downward pressure. Counterpoint projects global smartphone shipments will reach 1.08 billion units in 2026, down 13.9% year-over-year—a new low since 2013.

Admittedly, the current smartphone market downturn is partly due to soaring memory prices suppressing consumer demand. However, since 2022, the global smartphone market has been mired in a prolonged slump, showing no significant recovery despite the widespread adoption of AI technology.

Clearly, three years after their debut, AI smartphones haven’t unlocked an 'iPhone moment.' Why is this the case?

02 AI Technology Offers 'Efficiency Gains,' But Smartphone User Demand Remains Lukewarm

While the core functions of AI smartphones across their three development stages differ, they can all be summarized as 'efficiency gains.' Whether through AI writing, system-level multimodal AI, or Agents, these features reflect tech companies' underlying logic of seizing the AI opportunity by improving user operational efficiency.

Smartphone-based Agents, in particular, were once seen by tech companies as a critical gateway to the AI era. Since 2025, as model reasoning capabilities have matured and tool-calling abilities have been engineered into practical applications, AI has transcended the Chatbot paradigm, gradually gaining the ability to autonomously complete complex tasks.

Against this backdrop, both tech giants like Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba, as well as smartphone manufacturers like Honor, Xiaomi, and OPPO, have actively invested in Agent technology, aiming to transform their AI assistants into super entry points for the next era.

Source: Honor

For example, in October 2025, Honor launched the Honor Magic8 series, positioned as the 'most powerful self-evolving AI-native smartphone.' Its YOYO Agent offers eight AI experiences, including shopping, dining, and travel companions, supporting automatic execution in over 3,000 scenarios.

Similarly, in January 2026, Qianwen fully integrated with Alibaba’s ecosystem businesses like Taobao, Alipay, and Gaode, enabling AI-powered shopping functions such as ordering food, booking flights, and reserving hotels.

Drawing from the mobile internet era’s experience, super entry points hold immense potential. Since Agents can execute specific tasks, if an AI assistant captures a massive user base like WeChat, it could dominate the mobile internet ecosystem, becoming the key gateway for users to access various services.

By controlling the smartphone super entry point, tech companies would not only secure a stable foundation in the AI era but also gain the power to subtly integrate their ecosystems and dictate the rollout of emerging businesses.

However, as previously discussed, AI smartphones haven’t swept the market, primarily due to two inherent flaws in the super entry point concept.

First, the fragmented mobile internet ecosystem restricts AI assistants' task execution capabilities. To avoid becoming mere service conduits, national-level apps like WeChat, Alipay, and Meituan are reluctant to fully open their data interfaces to third-party AI assistants. While Doubao’s smartphone GUI simulation click technology broke through ecosystem barriers, it faced united resistance from internet giants, halting further progress.

Second, for most users, the fundamental demand for smartphones isn’t 'efficiency gains' but 'emotional value.'

Alibaba founder Jack Ma once revealed, 'Around 17 million people browse Taobao and Tmall every night without buying anything. I don’t know what they’re doing—just wandering aimlessly. So your website can’t just be for shopping; experience, fun, communication, and sharing are more important.'

Source: Syntun

Against this backdrop, despite the widespread adoption of AI technology in this year’s shopping festivals, consumer demand hasn’t significantly surged. Syntun data shows that during the 2026 618 shopping festival, comprehensive e-commerce platform sales reached 863.6 billion yuan, up just 0.9% year-over-year—far below the previous year’s 15.2% growth.

Realizing that AI’s 'efficiency gains' contradict smartphone users' fundamental needs, tech companies have pivoted.

During Tencent’s Q2 2025 earnings call, President Martin Lau emphasized the importance of Yuanbao: 'Over the next few months, we’ll integrate Yuanbao with Tencent’s existing platforms to leverage our strengths.'

A year later, Lau calmly (calmly) stated, 'Identifying high-value scenarios is just as important—if not more so—than blindly acquiring massive daily active users and engagement time. This is a critical distinction.'

Source: Tencent

Currently, tech companies like Tencent are racing to deploy AI office businesses such as WorkBuddy. In productivity scenarios, users have clear cost-reduction and efficiency-enhancement needs, making it easier for AI technology to deliver immediate productivity gains and convince users to pay.

According to Jiemian News, WorkBuddy has become one of Tencent’s highest-priority AI applications. This year, it’s likely to enter the 'Hall of Fame,' Tencent’s internal honor roll for top products, which has previously included WeChat Public Platform, Honor of Kings, and Tencent Meeting.

03 Must AI Terminals Be Smartphones?

Over the past few years, smartphone manufacturers have built upon touchscreen smartphones to explore AI smartphones, seemingly overlooking a critical question: Must AI smartphones follow the traditional smartphone form?

Recalling the transition from feature phones to smartphones, while both are portable, their design philosophies differ fundamentally.

Externally, smartphones eliminated physical keyboards and adopted touchscreens to display complex content. Internally, they incorporated sensors like electronic compasses, gyroscopes, and accelerometers, enhancing perceptual capabilities. This fusion enabled smartphones to support complex functions like video playback, navigation, and photography, fostering a thriving mobile internet ecosystem.

The same logic applies to AI smartphones. As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated, 'The iPhone is the greatest consumer hardware product ever, but it wasn’t designed for AGI.' Users primarily interact with AI assistants through natural language dialogue, rendering features like high-refresh-rate screens, high-performance CPUs, and ultra-high-pixel cameras largely irrelevant to enhancing the AI experience.

Given the struggles of traditional smartphones to transition into AI devices, many tech companies are actively exploring cutting-edge hardware innovations.

Source: iKKO

For example, in July 2025, iKKO launched the card-style AI smartphone Mind One. While its underlying specs are unremarkable, its appearance and system are deeply customized with AI technology.

Mind One features a square design with a 4.02-inch screen. Its camera adjusts front and back via a flip mechanism, offering extreme portability.

Source: iKKO

Beyond the standard Android system, Mind One includes a lightweight iKKO AI OS, allowing users to switch systems via physical buttons. With NovaLink technology, its AI functions remain usable even without a SIM card or Wi-Fi.

Source: Honor

Similarly, facing stagnant growth in traditional smartphones, Honor is actively developing innovative mobile products. On August 12, 2026, Honor will host a product launch event to unveil the world’s first robotic smartphone, the Honor Robot Phone. Its standout feature is a four-degree-of-freedom titanium alloy mechanical gimbal system at the top, supporting one-click ejection and intelligent camera movement.

Regarding this, Honor CEO Li Jian stated, 'A smartphone shouldn’t just be a boring black box with a touchscreen. We decided to give it a brain—and limbs—resulting in bold, avant-garde, and exploratory product designs like the Honor Robot Phone.'

Source: Trung Phan

OpenAI initially planned to follow the traditional smartphone path for AI hardware but has since shifted its strategic focus to innovative devices. On August 7, 2026, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI’s first consumer device resembles a 'donut' in shape, lacks a display, and supports voice interaction—much like a portable smart speaker.

Overall, the AI smartphone sector is still in its early stages with numerous players vying for dominance, and no benchmark product has yet emerged to redefine product form, interaction methods, or even industry rules, akin to the original iPhone.

However, for the AI hardware industry, the constant emergence of innovative products is not necessarily bad news. In previous years, the industry primarily focused on integrating large model capabilities into existing smartphone frameworks without reconstructing hardware forms. Today, an increasing number of tech companies are realizing that if AI represents a new computing platform migration, the terminal that carries it is likely not just an "AI-enhanced version" of traditional smartphones.

This implies that the real competition in the next phase of AI smartphones will no longer be solely about model parameters and computing power configurations, but rather about which company can first forge a hardware paradigm that matches native AI interactions.

AI hardware may ultimately remain as "a screen" or transform into robots, glasses, speakers, or even some form that has not yet been named today.

From this perspective, the current chaos and trial-and-error in the AI hardware market are clearly not signs of industry stagnation, but rather an inevitable exploration period before the birth of a new terminal paradigm.

Interactive Topic

Have you used an AI smartphone? What do you think of it?

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