(Yicai) Dec. 2 -- ZTE, a Chinese telecoms equipment supplier, released its first smartphone equipped with the artificial intelligence assistant of TikTok owner ByteDance, with the device only available to developers and industry professionals.

The Nubia M153 launched at a price of CNY3,499 (USD505) yesterday, featuring ByteDance's Doubao AI Assistant, an intelligent conversation tool that offers text generation, multilingual translation, and code assistance, ZTE announced on the same day.

The first batch of about 30,000 new products was sold out quickly this morning.

In addition, ByteDance is in talks to link arms with multiple handset makers, but "has no plans to develop its own smartphones," the Beijing-based company noted yesterday, while confirming the launch of the Nubia M153. It previously denied several rumors of co-developing products with ZTE.

"The alliance between ZTE and ByteDance seems somewhat similar to Huawei Technologies' collaboration model with automakers," an anonymous phone manufacturer told Yicai. " ByteDance holds the lead in the AI development of the device, while ZTE provides hardware engineering capabilities."

ByteDance disclosed the scope and targets of its tie-up with ZTE and revealed application scenarios. For example, the Doubao AI Assistant can automatically switch between multiple apps based on user instructions to complete tasks, including checking tickets, managing bookings, ordering products, downloading batch files, and logistics tracking.

"The Doubao AI Assistant was developed based on apps and in cooperation with smartphone manufacturers at the operating system level," ByteDance said. "It can be integrated into the models of various brands through ecosystem collaboration," it noted, adding that with mutual authorization, the large language model capabilities configured on phones can reach "world-class level."

Nubia, a sub-brand of ZTE, focuses on imaging functions and has relatively niche products, with multiple data institutions not including its shipments in their reports due to "insufficient volume."

"Doubao leads the product definition and user experience of the AI assistant, while Nubia takes charge of hardware development and tech research," a person in charge of the brand said to Yicai, but refused to provide delivery predictions.

LLM developers linking arms with phone makers is not a new trend due to smart handsets having the largest user base, most abundant data, and most frequent interactions, making them a key competitive area. Alibaba Group Holdings has allied with multiple phone manufacturers, including Oppo Mobile Telecommunications and Honor.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev