At the Apsara conference in 2026, Alibaba introduced Qwen Intelligence—a full-stack agent technology platform designed for smartphone manufacturers, not for releasing its own phone, according to coverage from September 22–23. The official branding includes Alibaba / Qwen / Honor.
This announcement represents an agent software stack from Alibaba for phones, which includes Planner, Mobile-Use, Creative, and OS Harness components, rather than the launch of a new device. The mention of the Doubao Phone Agent remains a separate topic.
The stack incorporates three phone-optimized agent lines based on the Qwen model. The Mobile Planner Agent handles task decomposition, tool orchestration, and dynamic replanning. For instance, it can convert a business trip request into booking flights, hotels, calendar entries, and updating routes in case of flight cancellation, utilizing joint model and Harness evolution, as well as two-layer operation and long-term memory.
The Mobile-Use Agent performs actions directly on the device via an API-based path over MCP, DeepLink, or CLI, and also has a backup visual interface when interfaces are unavailable. It is also equipped with multi-level protective barriers that reject high-risk requests and pass refund or deletion decisions to the user.
The Mobile Creative Agent transforms voice creative prompts into layout-aware images. The company claims that material generation time was reduced from approximately 100 steps to 8, with the first image delay being about three seconds.
Honor product line president Fan Fei stated that the Magic9 series, expected to launch about a week after the Apsara presentation on September 28, along with the Honor robot phone, will be among the first devices to use Qwen Intelligence, fine-tuned with MagicOS regarding power, memory, latency, and UI operations.
Alibaba Vice President Steven Hoi emphasized that Alibaba will not manufacture phone hardware, positioning the company as a provider of models and Harnesses, while OEMs retain control over the experience and data. Secondary Chinese coverage mentions claims of joint solutions, such as 91.8% complex task completion accuracy and a UI latency of about 3.6 seconds, but these figures remain partner claims.
Qwen Intelligence is provided as modular products—base models, Harness variants, cloud and edge synchronization, operations, and security—allowing OEMs to differentiate tools and skills. Four open evaluation sets covering planning, cross-app execution, on-device tasks, and security scenarios are included with the release. The specific takeaway from Apsara is that this is a phone agent platform for OEMs, with Honor serving as the first official user, not a new phone from Alibaba.