Instead of bean bags, it’s better to make an elderly machine first.

The elderly group is a consumer group with a high degree of overlap between Nubia and bean bags.

文/魏霞

“Almost none of the third-party software can be used automatically through voice, and even the simplest search function of opening the Bilibili website cannot be used.”

A user who purchased a Doubao phone on JD.com left such a comment on Nubia’s official flagship store.

Last month, Doubao’s second-generation mobile phone was released. This is actually Nubia’s first AI smartphone phone for consumers, because Doubao’s first-generation mobile phone is still at the “technical preview” level.

On the eve of the release of the Doubao mobile phone, scalpers on the second-hand platform were working hard and preparing to make a fortune. After all, after the release of the first-generation Beanbao mobile phone, the official price was only 3,499 yuan, but the price of the unopened model on second-hand platforms doubled, and even went up to tens of thousands of yuan at one time.

But what the scalpers didn’t expect was that although the number of reservations for the second-generation Doubao mobile phone on JD.com exceeded 370,000, which was much higher than the stocking volume, it did not continue the rush to buy the first generation.

The official launch price of the second-generation Doubao mobile phone starts at 5,999 yuan. The “scalper price” on second-hand platforms has also dropped from an increase of 1,000 yuan to 199 yuan. In the end, scalpers are not even required to enter the market. Most models are in stock within half an hour of going on sale.

This month, the Doubao mobile phone, which has only been online for a month, directly announced a price reduction. The price of the high-end version on the JD.com platform has been reduced by more than 700 yuan.

To a certain extent, this cooperation between Doubao and Nubia is very similar to the cooperation between Thalys and Huawei. Perhaps the intention of both parties is also this, to achieve overtaking in corners through the integration of software and hardware.

However, unlike the relatively early stage of the automotive ecosystem, the mobile phone ecosystem is already very mature, which to a large extent has resulted in relatively high barriers to breakthrough.

On October 14, Doubao Mobile Assistant announced a list of applications that were refused operation, involving 155 applications, including WeChat, Taobao, Meituan and other high-frequency applications.

This has poured cold water on existing or potential consumers to a certain extent. But from another perspective, consumers themselves are a broad concept.

People who spend 5,000 yuan on mobile phones may care about whether AI can call WeChat and Meituan, but people who spend 1,000 yuan on mobile phones are likely to give different answers.

When the Doubao mobile phone was positioned in the 5,000 yuan range, both Byte and Nubia ignored the consumption base that both parties already had, that is, the elderly group.

Maybe they are the ones who need Beanbag phones the most.

01

For a long time before launching the Beanbag phone, Nubia had a low presence in the market.

Data released by IDC shows that ZTE (ZTE) had a share of 0.3% in the Chinese smartphone market in the second quarter of 2026, ranking ninth.

As a brand owned by ZTE, although Nubia does not have a separate market share statistics, it is not difficult to see that it has become an absolute “niche brand” by referring to ZTE’s market share.

Among the data released by IDC, another data worthy of attention is that in the Chinese smartphone market, the top six brands occupy about 96% of the market share, covering almost all price segments.

And Nubia can still occupy a place in the niche market, relying on segmented labels such as “photography mobile phones”, “e-sports mobile phones” and “elderly mobile phones”. Judging from the sales of Nubia’s self-operated flagship store on JD.com, the Maverick series of products is one of its “star products”, with sales exceeding 40,000 units.

Nubian Mavericks are currently priced at 999 to 1,099 yuan on JD.com. Combined with various discounts such as national/local subsidies and silver hair subsidies, the price for consumers is less than 1,000 yuan.

Nubia’s customer service told us that this phone is very popular among the elderly.

Of course, the price is on the one hand, but on the other hand, Nubia Mavericks also has an age-friendly mode, such as a large-print interface and AI smart voice, which are convenient for the elderly to operate. Users only need to move their mouths to make calls or check the weather.

Compared with copycat phones that cost 100 yuan, the Nubia Mavericks, which only costs 1,000 yuan, can be said to be very cost-effective.

Although the Mavericks series is not Nubia’s top mobile phone on the current best-selling mobile phone list, it can be regarded as an “evergreen series”.

Currently, most of the top five Nubia mobile phones on the best-selling list are new mobile phones released in the past two months. Only the Maverick series has been on the market for more than two years.

While the Nubia Mavericks series of mobile phones have proven their potential in the elderly market, bean bags are also popular among the elderly.

Doubao currently has more than 400 million monthly active users, and QuestMobile data shows that in January 2026, the monthly active users of Doubao over 50 years old reached 6.07 million.

Although the proportion of elderly users does not seem to be high, the habit of using AI among elderly users has been cultivated by Doubao, ranging from checking weather forecasts to talking about their concerns. By accurately overcoming the pain points of elderly users, more and more elderly people have become heavy users of Doubao.

It can be seen that the elderly group should be a consumer group with a high degree of overlap between Nubia and bean bags. Market development based on the portrait of this group of people should be said to be the most natural choice.

02

In fact, senior phones have indeed reached a point where it is necessary to iterate, because the traditional profit model of manufacturers has been widely challenged by public opinion.

As we all know, Android mobile phone manufacturers have two main profit channels, one is by selling mobile phones, and the other is by selling advertising. Especially for mid-to-low-end mobile phones, the latter is crucial, which to a large extent reversely stimulates the advertising ecology on mobile phones.

A user on Xiaohongshu shared a video of himself being overwhelmed by mobile ads.

The reason was that when the user was checking the weather on his mobile phone, he clicked on the “CCTV Weather” video, and many recommended videos appeared. Among them was a reminder that “the phone’s junk cache is full.” The reminder page also had two buttons, “Clean” and “Delete.”

After the user clicked “Delete”, the phone seemed to be taken over and began to open various “applications” uncontrollably. If you observe carefully, it is not difficult to find that among the advertisements that are opened one after another, some have “fake close buttons” and some have “shake to jump”.

Not to mention that it is difficult for the elderly with degraded vision and slow reaction time to turn off these advertisements, even young people have a high probability of accidentally touching them.

These ads can keep popping up and jumping like viruses, mainly because of quick apps.

But to be fair, the birth of quick apps is not to hit users with advertising, but to benchmark small programs.

In 2017, the WeChat mini program was officially launched. There is no need to download, it does not occupy the memory of the mobile phone, and it can be quickly started on WeChat. It can even be logged in with one click by being associated with the WeChat account, making it truly lightweight.

This kind of “use and go” experience quickly cultivates users’ habit of using mini programs. Data shows that the WeChat mini program had only 60,000 monthly active users in the month it was launched, but a year later, this figure reached 472 million, and the penetration rate in WeChat reached 51.9%.

This makes mobile phone manufacturers feel an unprecedented crisis. The reduced dependence of users on APPs will directly affect the income of mobile phone manufacturers. In order to fight against mini programs, Android mobile phone manufacturers have launched an alliance to launch “quick applications” that compete with mini programs.

And Nubia is an important member of this alliance.

Like mini programs, quick apps also do not require installation to use APP functions. This could have greatly improved the user experience of Android users, but the reality is that it has been more than 8 years since the birth of quick apps, and now its existence value seems to be only advertising, and it is even despised by users as a “cancer” of Android machines.

Under normal circumstances, there are two ways for APP developers to monetize: one is IAP, which is in-app purchase, such as some long video applications, users need to recharge to purchase membership services, and the other is IAA, which is advertising monetization.

At present, the IAA model has become very popular and mature, and is an important path for APP developers to complete the commercialization closed loop.

On the market, in addition to Internet advertisers such as ByteDance and Pangolin, mobile phone manufacturers also have their own advertising commercialization platforms, such as Huawei’s Jinghong Kinetic Advertising Alliance, Xiaomi’s Mi Meng, etc.

Take Jinghong Dynamic Energy as an example. The number of advertisers will increase by 200% in 2025, and it will have access to more than 107,000 third-party media companies around the world.

If APP developers want to make money from advertising, they only need to insert the codes provided by these manufacturers into their own APP, which is equivalent to selling the “advertising space” in the APP.

This model was later copied to Quick Apps, and compared with APPs, Quick Apps are more “talented” in advertising.

In the past, developers wanted to get advertising revenue on the premise that users had at least downloaded the corresponding APP on their mobile phones. But with quick apps, this premise has been broken. What’s more, to the surprise of advertisers, the ad jump is shorter, and you can jump directly to the target quick app without going through the path of “downloading the APP”.

This “click to activate” model is extremely smooth for users and reduces user loss in the process, which is naturally attractive to advertisers such as games, e-commerce, novels, short plays, etc.

Data released by the 2024 Quick App Developer Conference shows that the number of quick app users has exceeded 750 million, the commercial scale has reached 16 billion yuan, and the number of developers has exceeded 30,000.

This 16 billion is valuable not only to developers, but also to manufacturers.

Since the beginning of this year, the price of memory chips has continued to rise. Mobile phone manufacturers that cannot withstand the cost pressure have either raised prices or simply stopped selling mid-to-low-end models. Leading brands have released very few new phones worth 100 yuan.

But if the manufacturer’s brand cannot support high-end development, it will inevitably have to stay in the mid-to-low-end market, such as the elderly phone market. For these models, the profits of hardware are as thin as razor blades, so they must benefit from the software ecosystem.

But it may be difficult to continue on this path of quick application.

03

Because AI assistants appear.

The mobile phone industry is undoubtedly experiencing another “mini program moment”, but this time the main body of the “confrontation” alliance has changed from mobile phone manufacturers to major application manufacturers.

In an ideal world, users no longer need to open various APP functions on their mobile phones. They only need to tell the AI ​​assistant their needs. The AI ​​assistant can use “screen automation operation” technology to let the AI ​​understand the screen and simulate human operation of the mobile phone to complete various tasks.

The controversy over the Doubao mobile phone is actually a necessary stage in the paradigm shift of the mobile Internet from “APP-centered” to “Agent-centered”.

For example, some security risks may be involved in the process of operating mobile phones by some AIs, which may also pose challenges to the closed-loop commercialization path of major application manufacturers.

When AI replaces human browsing actions, the past recommendation algorithm mechanism may be subverted, and even mobile apps can be directly reduced to “low-level tools”, which will have a great impact on both advertising revenue and membership revenue.

But this does not mean that the development of AI mobile phones will stop here.

In fact, it’s not just Nubia. Against the background of China’s smartphone shipments declining for six consecutive quarters, many mobile phone manufacturers are beginning to look for a way out, and AI phones are one of the directions. Even large model companies are not willing to miss the trend of AI mobile phones. For example, Step Star has released the smart phone STEPX Neo.

Although Nubia has not yet entered the first echelon of domestic mobile phone brands, AI mobile phones may indeed become an important breakthrough for it, especially AI mobile phones for the elderly.

In fact, for users, high-frequency software such as WeChat and Meituan cannot be called by AI assistants, and the experience will not be much worse. Because everyone can still enter the relevant software by clicking on the APP.

What is really in urgent need of innovative experience are those that are easy to activate quick applications, such as map navigation, hospital registration, checking the weather, asking for recipes, etc. These are not high-frequency and have unfamiliar entrances, but they are still needed.

If Doubao helps users implement AI calls for these functions and optimize their experience through embedding, it would be a great achievement.

Of course, another important point is that Doubao mobile phones are also expected to solve the problem of the elderly group being disturbed by advertisements for a long time.

For some advertisements with clicks and downloads as the ultimate goal, senior mobile phones are the best petri dishes. The mobile phone’s built-in news feed, weather application, and even the calendar are full of designed advertising spaces, making it difficult for people to guard against them.

With the emergence of AI mobile phones such as Doubao, in order to be selected and used, APPs will also perform some GEO optimization, which may include reducing and removing some advertisements.

But judging from the current situation, if the Doubao mobile phone is to be made into a mobile phone for the elderly, it must continue to optimize its cost. The current pricing of high-end mobile phones has excluded most elderly people.

And currently, through activities such as posting orders, Doubao Mobile only gives away membership rights for half a year, and users will need to renew according to their needs in the future.