Apple is reportedly partnering with Chinese technology giant Alibaba to finally roll out its artificial intelligence features for iPhone users in China.
The development, reported by The Information, could clear months of uncertainty over Apple’s AI strategy for China, where it has been losing market share to domestic rivals such as Huawei.
While companies like Huawei have been including AI tools in their smartphones since last year, Apple has remained on the back foot due to domestic Chinese laws.
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The country’s regulatory requirements mandate that generative AI services obtain government approval before public release, forcing Apple to seek local partners for its AI features.
The iPhone-maker has been searching for a local partner since last year and had initially selected Baidu as its main partner. But the Chinese company’s progress in developing models for Apple Intelligence fell short of its standards, The Information reported.
After that, Apple considered models developed by Tencent, TikTok-parent ByteDance, Alibaba and Deepseek, but it passed on Deepseek as the startup’s team lacked the manpower and experience needed to support a large customer, the report said.
Ultimately, Apple decided to go with Alibaba partly due to the e-commerce giant’s vast troves of personal data on users’ shopping and payment habits, The Information said. It hopes that data could help it train models and deliver more customised services.
Critical juncture in China market
According to The Information, Apple and Alibaba have submitted the Chinese AI features they co-developed for approval by China’s cyberspace regulator.
Being able to roll out its AI tools in China will be crucial for Apple as iPhone sales dipped in the holiday quarter, which is usually its biggest period of sales.
The dip was part of a sustained sales slump Apple is experiencing in China, brought on partly due to the absence of AI features that are meant to be the chief selling point of its latest devices, and partly thanks to a wave of patriotic sentiment in the country.
A bitter technology war with the US and the resurgence of Huawei after being nearly decimated by Washington’s sanctions has fuelled a rush among the Chinese to purchase homegrown tech.
Those factors led Apple to briefly fall out of China’s top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter last year, before recovering in the third quarter.
The company has forecast strong sales growth in the current quarter, fanning hopes that iPhone demand will rebound.
- Reuters, with additional editing and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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