iPhone AI features will be powered by Alibaba in China
Alibaba has announced that it is partnering with Apple to provide artificial intelligence features to iPhones in China. Apple Intelligence features have not yet been enabled in China, which is thought to have contributed to the company’s local decline in smartphone sales.
”They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones,” Alibaba chairman Joseph Tsai said. “We feel extremely honoured to do business with a great company like Apple.”
The announcement doesn’t quite end speculation as to which local tech companies Apple will partner with to enable its AI features. The company reportedly evaluated models from Tencent, ByteDance, and DeepSeek, and may still partner with other companies. Apple “continues to work with Baidu” on “an AI-powered search feature that can handle images and text,” along with upgrades to the Chinese version of Siri, according to a report from The Information published today.
Outside of China, Apple Intelligence runs on a combination of Apple’s proprietary tech and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is not available in China. It’s not clear if there’ll be a similar approach for the AI features in China, perhaps with multiple partners. Any consumer-facing AI features require regulatory approval, and according to The Information Apple and Alibaba have already submitted materials to regulators.
iPhone sales have been declining in China, and in 2024 Apple lost the top spot for smartphone sales, coming in third for Q4 behind Huawei and Xiaomi. Analysts have repeatedly attributed lagging sales to the lack of iPhone AI features in the country, and Apple will be under pressure to make up lost ground.
