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# China is rebuilding the smartphone around AI agents. ZTE’s NaviX sold out in hours.

**[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

ZTE unveiled the NaviX Ultra at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, branding it the world's first agentic AI smartphone. Built under the Nubia brand, it runs ByteDance's Doubao AI agent and sold its initial 30,000 units quickly, with prices doubling on the secondary market. StepFun and Honor showed comparable devices, all sharing the same design philosophy: embedding an agentic layer directly into the OS so AI can autonomously execute tasks across apps, rather than adding isolated AI features on top. The push comes as China's smartphone market faces five consecutive quarters of declining shipments, with IDC projecting AI phones could exceed half of China's market in 2026. The launches also intensify competition with Apple, which recently received Beijing's approval to roll out Apple Intelligence in China via Alibaba and Baidu partnerships.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://thenextweb.com/news/china-agentic-ai-smartphones-zte-navix-doubao-waic>

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