UBTECH and China Telecom's Tianyi Target 100,000 Humanoid Terminals in Three Years
China Telecom's stores, rentals and service bundles become UBTECH's route into homes, backed by a joint lab and a 10,000-unit factory.
UBTECH and Tianyi Telecom Terminal signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement on November 9, aiming to push humanoid robots out of factories and showrooms and into homes. Tianyi is a wholly owned subsidiary of China Telecom Group, responsible for the operator's terminal business.
The headline numbers are targets, not orders. The partners aim to help the household-companion robot terminal industry pass one million units within three years, and for ultra-bionic humanoid, wheeled humanoid and related terminals to pass 100,000 units in the same period. Those figures describe the size of the industry the partners want to build, not deliveries UBTECH has booked.
Distribution is the core of the deal. Tianyi brings China Telecom's store network, customer base and household digital services. The plan covers joint procurement and marketing, robot rentals, packages that bundle AI services with terminals, and hands-on trials in telecom stores. Tianyi deputy general manager Gui Xuan described the approach as lowering adoption barriers through new business models and in-store experience.
At the signing the two sides unveiled a joint innovation laboratory focused on finding use cases, customizing products, validating applications and setting standards. On the technical side, robot speech interaction, visual recognition and emotional computing will be wired into telecom cloud-network infrastructure, AI models, satellite services, security and eSIM, so capabilities can be packaged in both directions. UBTECH senior vice president Hao Baoyu said the company will deepen product work for household companionship and commercial services.
UBTECH says the manufacturing base is ready: a smart factory built for 10,000-unit scale entered operation in the second half of 2026, with multiple product lines in mass production and delivery. Whether telecom stores can turn foot traffic into household robots is the open question — the agreement gives UBTECH a sales channel it has never had, but the three-year targets will be judged on shipments, not signatures.