Apple Intelligence is finally coming to iPhones in China, and some of it will run on Alibaba's Qwen. In an announcement on its China newsroom on 31 October, Apple said it has partnered with Alibaba to add Qwen support to some Apple Intelligence experiences. Testing starts on 4 November in the latest iOS developer beta, and the features launch for users in China with iOS 27.3 in December. It ends a delay of more than two years, and it gives the world's best-known phone maker a Chinese model as its main AI partner in that market.
Why it took so long
Apple Intelligence first launched in 2024, but its China version needed approval from Chinese regulators, and TechCrunch reported that this was the main cause of the delay. Reports that Apple had picked Alibaba as a partner first surfaced in February 2025. Reuters reported on 15 July 2026 that the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet content regulator, had approved Apple's AI services, as relayed by TechCrunch. Baidu also confirmed at the time that it is working with Apple on Apple Intelligence features for users in China, so Alibaba may not be the only local partner.
Where Qwen shows up
According to Apple, Qwen works in three places:
- Siri, which can use Qwen for certain requests and can answer questions about photos and documents, including PDFs and presentations.
- Writing Tools, which gains a Create option that writes original content from scratch with Qwen.
- Visual Intelligence, which uses Qwen for text and image understanding.
Users access Qwen by signing in to a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple. The rest of the package includes features Apple users elsewhere already know, such as Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone, Writing Tools for rewriting and summarising, Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, notification summaries and Type to Siri.
Who gets it, and when
Apple lists the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo as supported devices, with Siri and device language set to English or Simplified Chinese. 9to5Mac notes that the launch is iPhone only, and Apple says other platforms will follow after the necessary approvals. CGTN, citing Alibaba, reports that the features apply to Apple Intelligence iPhones bought in China, or to phones where both the device location and the Apple Account region are set to China.
Privacy, as Alibaba describes it
Apple's announcement does not include a privacy section. The privacy commitments come from Alibaba, as reported by CGTN, which cites the Xinhua news agency. Alibaba says users can choose whether to enable the Qwen integration and what information to share, and that it will not use user requests or generated responses to train its models. Those are company statements and have not been independently checked.
The catch is what is missing
Apple says this update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features it announced at WWDC 2026. Users in China therefore get the current generation of Apple Intelligence first, with Qwen handling the parts that need a large language model. 9to5Mac notes that Siri AI itself remains unavailable in China for now, even though iOS 27.2 expanded it to five more languages on 26 October.
This fits a pattern. Bloomberg reported in 2012 that Apple had chosen AutoNavi, a Chinese mapping company, as its map partner for iPhones in China, and iCloud for mainland Chinese accounts has been operated by the state-owned Guizhou-Cloud Big Data since February 2018, as Caixin reported. A CGTN-quoted expert at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications called the Qwen deal the first time a top global hardware maker has used a Chinese large model as its main system-level AI in China. We think AI is heading the same way as maps and cloud storage for global brands, with the same phone running a different model depending on the country.
What to do this week
If your customers are in China, start by asking Qwen what it says about your brand and products, because from December it will answer some of their Siri questions and help write the messages they send. If you build iOS apps for that market, test with the developer beta that starts on 4 November, with the device language set to Simplified Chinese. If you run marketing across several regions, list which AI model sits behind the assistants your customers use in each one, because that list now differs by country. For context on the Chinese AI market, read our pieces on Kimi K3.1 Pro and the China AI stock slide.