OpenAI version of “Beanbao Phone” is moving forward at full speed. Ming-Chi Kuo released the latest news saying that OpenAI smart phones have entered accelerated research and development mode. He pointed out that the mass production time of the mobile phone may be advanced from 2028 to the first half of 2027.


Ming-Chi Kuo believes that one of the potential reasons for the speedup is to cooperate with OpenAI’s IPO plan at the end of the year.

If things go well, the total shipments of this phone from 2027 to 2028 will reach about 30 million units.

What does OpenAI’s “bean bag phone” look like?

This is an Agent phone redesigned from the underlying logic.

The bean bag phone launched earlier this year does something similar.

However, the idea behind Doubao Mobile is to add a layer of GUI Agent to the existing Android ecosystem, allowing AI to understand the screen, simulate clicks, and complete tasks for users across apps.

But the design of OpenAI is to turn the AI ​​assistant from an App into the operating core of the mobile phone, controlling the hardware and operating system at the same time, making the Agent become the system itself.


At the hardware level, the processor is deeply customized by MediaTek based on Dimensity 9600 and uses TSMC N2P process. It is expected to be put into production in the second half of 2026.

This phone will use a dual NPU heterogeneous architecture to support visual understanding and language reasoning running in parallel.

In actual work, daily lightweight tasks are completed locally, and complex reasoning is pushed to the cloud.

In terms of storage, this phone will use a memory storage combination of LPDDR6 and UFS 5.0, with the purpose of easing the data throughput bottleneck in the Agent's continuous reasoning process.

In addition, the security solution of pKVM plus inline hashing is also in the specification list. The ISP is equipped with an enhanced HDR pipeline, and the imaging capabilities are simultaneously enhanced.

According to the news, the entire manufacturing of this mobile phone will be completed exclusively by Luxshare Precision.

If the development progress goes smoothly, the total shipment volume of this mobile phone from 2027 to 2028 will reach approximately 30 million units.

The annual shipment volume of the global high-end smartphone market is between 300 million and 400 million units. If OpenAI can capture this share, it means directly entering the most competitive market segment with a new brand.

Estimated to ship 30 million units

This phone first appeared in public view in April this year.

At that time, Ming-Chi Kuo released a supply chain report, revealing that OpenAI was cooperating with MediaTek and Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors. Luxshare Precision was the exclusive manufacturing partner, with mass production scheduled for 2028.

Less than a month later, he issued this update again, and the mass production time was directly advanced to the first half of 2027.


OpenAI’s real entry into hardware will start in May 2025.

At that time, OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s (former Apple chief design officer) hardware startup io for $6.5 billion.

This is the largest merger and acquisition in the history of OpenAI. Jony Ive is the person who designed the first generation iPhone, iPod, and iPad.

After the acquisition was completed, most of the outside world’s attention fell on the screenless devices led by Jony Ive.

But now, OpenAI believes that mobile phones are the only devices that can capture the user’s full status in real time and are the most important input source for Agent reasoning.

Only by controlling the hardware and operating system at the same time can the Agent experience be completely delivered. Always living under the platform rules of Apple and Google, there will always be a limit to what the Agent can do.

OpenAI’s advantages are self-evident. ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of daily active users, which is a starting point that no hardware manufacturer has.

From a supply chain perspective, the outline of this phone is also gradually emerging. The

processor was finally locked on MediaTek, and Qualcomm was eliminated; the manufacturing partner was Luxshare Precision. For Luxshare, this project is as significant as Foxconn is to Apple.

However, the final confirmation of specifications and suppliers is not expected until the end of 2026 to the first quarter of 2027.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo’s prediction, if the progress remains unchanged, the total shipment volume of this mobile phone from 2027 to 2028 will reach approximately 30 million units.

For OpenAI, which is on the eve of its IPO, who will win in this smartphone battle will define the interaction method of the next generation of mobile computing.

Reference link:

https://x.com/mingchikuo/status/2051523855286776034