The Doubao AI phone has become popular, and I suddenly realized: the competitors of the giants are not the giants themselves, but the 'strange things' lurking in the corners.
Recently, the Doubao AI phone has become popular; it sold out as soon as it was launched, and on second-hand platforms, it has even been priced at tens of thousands.
The reason why the Doubao AI phone is so popular is that it can truly help users save 'money' + 'time'.
For example, if you give the command to help me buy a pack of instant noodles, it will immediately go to compare prices, select, compare delivery options, check coupons, and place the order automatically; you just need to click 'confirm' at the last step.
It is not like the previous voice assistants (Siri, Xiao Ai, or other shortcuts), but an action-level AI (AI Agent) directly embedded in the phone's system.
If you think deeply about it, you'll find an interesting fact: we currently believe the mobile phone market is saturated. Thinking about making phones again doesn't fit the timing (Luo Yonghao often mentions this in his live streams). All major manufacturers, whether Apple, Huawei, etc., are constantly enhancing performance, camera technology, foldable phones, and triple-foldable phones.
But the Doubao phone was surprisingly made by 'ByteDance'. It's worth noting that ByteDance's main business is the content platform, which seems completely unrelated to making phones. Apple, Samsung, and Huawei are all competitors that you can't even see through a telescope, and unexpectedly, they are challenged by a content company!
This reminds me of a hardcore truth: true disruption never comes from a central force, but from 'marginal innovation' in the corners.
Today, let's talk about:
Why is the Doubao AI phone a signal?
Why can't giants produce this?
Historically, those cases of 'marginal innovations that killed giants' illustrate what?
01 What exactly has the Doubao AI phone changed? In a word: it has made phones proactive.
For over a decade, the phones have changed hands for just a few things:
Faster chips, larger screens, stronger cameras, longer battery life.
But today, what the Doubao AI phone does is a complete shift.
- Its system is not Android or iOS, but an AI-native operating system.
- Its core capability is not 'points', but 'dispatching tasks', truly helping users solve problems.
- Phones are no longer tools, but 'automated execution engines'.
In other words:
In the past, we operated phones; now phones are starting to operate the world.
This step is the first cut to break the decade-long duopoly of iOS and Android.
Ironically, this knife was thrust by Doubao.
02 Why can't giants produce this? Because they are 'too successful'.
Apple and Google control 99% of the global system ecosystem, which means:
- Cannot disrupt app store profits.
- Cannot disrupt existing ecosystems.
- Cannot disrupt user habits.
- Cannot overturn decades of their own models and start over.
Giants are too big, too stable, and too profitable; any radical innovation will hurt themselves.
They certainly know that agents are the future, but they cannot do it.
And Doubao does not have these burdens; its only goal is to go all-in on the new paradigm.
This is the biggest difference between marginal innovation and giants.
03 History tells us: giants often die at the hands of 'invisible small players'.
The following explosive cases have overturned entire industries:
Case 1: Nokia didn't die at the hands of Motorola, but at the hands of Apple, a computer company.
In 2005, Nokia held a global market share of 52%, stable as can be.
After seeing the first generation iPhone, their exact words were:
> 'This is not a phone.'
Indeed, this thing doesn’t look like a phone.
Yet it has turned Nokia into a PowerPoint presentation.
What did Nokia die from?
Died from marginal innovation.
Case 2: WeChat killing SMS was not done by the three major operators.
Back then, a text message cost 0.1 yuan, and the three major operators made money effortlessly.
Everyone thought SMS would be upgraded away by the operators themselves.
So what happened?
WeChat went live, and SMS became obsolete.
At that time, the operators realized: the real competitors are not peers but cross-industry players.
Case 3: Tesla disrupted the automotive industry, not by Toyota or Volkswagen, but by an IT startup.
Traditional car manufacturers care too much about engines, fuel car profits, supply chains, and 4S stores. They dare not change.
As a result, a Silicon Valley startup redefined 'cars':
Cars are intelligent terminals with four wheels. It's important to know that Tesla's greatest strength isn't the motor or battery, but FSD (Full Self-Driving). Today's century-old fuel vehicle manufacturers are being overturned by electric vehicles.
04 Why is it easier for marginal innovations to win? Because giants focus on the now, while the margins focus on the future.
What the giants think is:
'How to continue consolidating the existing market?' In the book (The Innovator's Dilemma), it states that giants don’t want to change; they simply can’t. The opportunities for innovation are small at the initial stage, and the risks are high. Giants are publicly traded companies with financial reports and profit requirements. As the saying goes, 'It's hard to turn a big ship around!'
Marginal players don't have such concerns. Their ships are small, and their iteration and update speed can be very fast. Moreover, at the initial stage, because their business scale is small, giants don't take them seriously. By the time they truly rise, the giants are already too late. This is the charm of business!
No one or company can ever sit back and relax. Many companies that have grown claim they want to become 'century-old enterprises', but becoming a century-old enterprise is not that easy.
05 Where is the significance of the Doubao AI phone? It's not about how many units are sold, but about opening an era's entrance.
In today's internet era, all are competing for user entry. Various apps are also competing. Currently, it seems that each giant occupies its own base and coexists peacefully. For example, WeChat is used for socializing, Alipay for financial payments, Tencent for gaming, and ByteDance for news.
However, once the Doubao phone came out, it completely destroyed these entry points, traditional internet companies were caught off guard, users directly interacted with AI, allowing AI to decide which app to open. Therefore, these traditional companies couldn't compete and began to ban Doubao phones.
But it's important to know that this kind of ban is useless because 'water can carry a boat, but a boat does not determine water'. Therefore, the Doubao AI phone did not rely on hardware but helped users save time and money in real scenarios, pushing the AI agent terminal to the world, becoming your external brain.
This wave of operations is most feared by internet companies, as it directly cuts off their traffic entry; then there’s the operating system. This time, Doubao uses Nubia instead of the Android system, while Apple has a closed-loop system. As long as the hardware has a significant advantage, it may be hard to be disrupted in the short term. The underlying phone manufacturers might be okay; after all, they are the foundation and can adapt their AI, so the more foundational the infrastructure, the more stable their roots. The upper layers are much easier to disrupt.
06 In conclusion: the true competitors often hide in directions invisible to giants.
The giants are always focused on current competitors,
But the real threat always comes from the future.
Today's Doubao AI phone is like the iPhone, WeChat, Tesla, and Douyin of the past—seemingly 'marginal'.
But it could be the starting point for the next paradigm shift.
Don't forget that saying:
> The ones that disrupt giants are never giants.
> but rather something that giants do not consider a competitor.
So this is the charm of the business world. For individuals, I think it's the same. Always stay alert and learn. Life has its ups and downs, and it's normal. If others seize opportunities in a certain era ahead of you, don't regret it. What you need to do is to always be prepared; the future will never lack opportunities!