Apple still has some cards left to play in the AI field, but they are far from enough.
One day in late October 2024, Tim Cook, who was still serving as Apple's CEO at the time, was asked a sensitive question by the media during his visit to Sina's headquarters in Beijing: when will Apple Intelligence (also known as Apple Smart) be launched in mainland China.
At that time, Tim Cook gave an official statement:
"We are working hard to move this forward. There is a very specific regulatory process behind it that we need to complete, and we hope to bring it to Chinese consumers as soon as possible."
Two years later, in October 2026, when Tim Cook appeared in Beijing again, his role had been adjusted from Apple CEO to Apple Executive Chairman, and the same question that arose two years ago was raised to him once again — this time, Tim Cook's response was far more precise.
Tim Cook's exact words were:
"We are very pleased to have been approved to bring the first batch of core features of Apple Intelligence to Chinese users, including real-time translation, the Eliminate tool in the Photos app, and writing tools, etc. — we look forward to making these features available to users in the upcoming beta version later this month."
In terms of timeline, Tim Cook finally clarified that the initial test of Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market will be launched within October. However, he also emphasized that the first batch of features launched this time does not include Siri AI, as well as other next-generation Apple Intelligence features that Apple unveiled at this year's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
It seems that the launch of Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market, despite all the twists and turns and remaining considerable imperfections, has finally made tangible progress — which is truly no easy feat.
All Preparations Completed, Only the Official Launch Remains
Before Tim Cook's latest statement, the entry of Apple Intelligence into the Chinese market had already passed several key milestones.
On July 15, 2026, the cyberspace administration department released information on public channels, announcing the expected filing information of 7 new mobile-side generative AI services, covering 7 mainstream mobile phone brands including Apple, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung and ZTE.
Among them, the large language model filed by Apple's mobile phones is named "Apple Smart" (that is, Apple Intelligence), the filing entity is Apple Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., the filing number is Shanghai-AppleZhiNeng-202506160057, and the filing date is July 8, 2026.
For Apple, the release of this filing information means that Apple Intelligence has obtained a pass to enter the Chinese market.
At that time, in response to this filing of Apple Intelligence, Alibaba told the media that Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen will be integrated as AI capabilities into Apple Smart, bringing intelligent experiences to Chinese users of iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS — users can directly experience the text and image understanding, content generation and other capabilities of Tongyi Qianwen on Apple devices without switching between apps.
It is worth mentioning that shortly after the above filing was announced, a support document titled "Use Tongyi Qianwen with Apple Smart on Mac" once appeared on Apple's official website, which clearly stated that Apple Smart can cooperate with Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen model, but this document was later removed from Apple's official website.
By September, the situation made further progress.
According to the information of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecom Equipment Access License, the national version of Apple's iPhone Duo foldable phone (model A3721), the iPhone 18 Pro series (model A3718) and other models obtained the trial approval license on September 2 this year, and completed the license renewal on September 29, adding the filing number of the large language model they are equipped with.
Specifically, the filing numbers of the large models carried by these involved models are: Shanghai-AppleZhiNeng-202506160057, Shanghai-TongYiWanXiang-202410090024, ZheJiang-TongYiQianWen-20230901, corresponding to Apple Smart, Tongyi Wanxiang and Tongyi Qianwen respectively.
Overall, for Apple, the regulatory process of Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market has taken another important step forward.
However, for Apple, it is not an overnight task to let consumers in the Chinese market use Apple Intelligence. After regulatory approval, Apple still needs to continue to complete a series of work including software improvement, experience testing and final push.
Therefore, Tim Cook stated in his latest statement that Apple Intelligence will conduct an initial test in the Chinese market within October, rather than the final version.
So when will the final version be available to ordinary users?
Tim Cook himself did not give a clear response to this question. However, according to a report by Mark Gurman, a well-known technology analyst who has long tracked and repeatedly broken Apple's updates, Apple plans to officially launch the first batch of Apple Intelligence functions in mainland China through the iOS 27.3 software update in December this year.
According to Mark Gurman's disclosure, the first batch of launched features include Genmoji custom emojis, notification summaries, writing tools, and the Clean Up function in the Photos app (allowing users to remove specific objects from photos) — all of which are features that Apple first released at WWDC two years ago.
However, Mark Gurman emphasized that the new version of the Siri AI assistant, which Apple heavily launched this year and reconstructed based on the Google Gemini model, is not included in this China launch plan — which is consistent with the Apple Intelligence related information mentioned in Tim Cook's speech this time.
Therefore, it is just around the corner for iPhone users in the Chinese market to be able to use Apple Intelligence.
A Choice That Goes Beyond Technical Logic
In the process of Apple Intelligence moving to the Chinese market, Apple's choice of partners is one of the issues that the public is most concerned about. According to the latest updates, Alibaba and its Tongyi Qianwen have been the selected partner for Apple's Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market.
In fact, on February 13, 2025, Joe Tsai, Chairman of the Alibaba Group Board of Directors, publicly responded to the cooperation rumors between Alibaba and Apple for the first time. He said:
"Apple needs a localized partner in China to provide services for their mobile phones. Apple has always been very picky, and they have talked with many Chinese companies. In the end, they chose to do business with us. Alibaba is very lucky to be able to cooperate with Apple."
Therefore, the fact that Alibaba has become Apple's AI partner in the Chinese market is not newsworthy — what is really worth paying attention to is, why Alibaba?
First of all, based on the relevant technical and policy restrictions of AI implementation and application, it is an inevitable path for Apple to find a local AI partner in the Chinese market for its products such as iPhone and Mac when promoting AI implementation in the Chinese market.
So when choosing a third-party partner, what are Apple's selection criteria?
Regarding this issue, Tim Cook once mentioned the two major reasons why he chose OpenAI in an interview with The Washington Post of the United States: the first is privacy protection; the second is technological leadership. Moreover, Tim Cook also made it clear that Apple has fully considered the partners, and Apple's cooperation will never be limited to a fixed partner forever.
It can be seen that privacy and technology are important considerations for Apple to find local AI partners in the US market — however, in the Chinese market, the situation is actually more complicated.
In fact, from the perspective of past cooperative relationships, Baidu was one of the first potential partners that Apple considered.
After all, Baidu and Apple have a dozen years of localized cooperation, and the two sides reached a cooperation to use Baidu search engine in iPhone and iPad as early as 2012. In 2015, Baidu also became the default search engine for Siri in the China region. Such a deep cooperation foundation is the core support for Apple to initially choose to cooperate with Baidu on AI implementation.
At the same time, in 2023 when large language models were emerging, Baidu's performance in large language models was indeed at its peak. In this context, it is indeed reasonable for Apple to choose to contact Baidu first.
But later facts proved that there were certain obstacles in the cooperation between Baidu and Apple: Apple's requirements for user experience are too strict, and Baidu cannot keep up in the cooperation process — in addition to technical issues, the cooperation between Baidu and Apple also encountered obstacles in data privacy.
Of course, there is another background that has to be mentioned: from 2024 to 2025, other large model players have also caught up with the pace.
Therefore, after encountering obstacles in the initial cooperation with Baidu, Apple also had potential contacts with multiple large model players in the Chinese market in 2024, and discussed the possibility of cooperation, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and even some small large model startups such as Zhipu AI and DeepSeek.
So why did Alibaba win in the end?
The answer is actually not complicated. All major players may have the technical ability to cooperate with Apple, but conflicts of interest and potential risks are enough to dissuade players like Tencent and ByteDance, while DeepSeek does not have the experience of serving large enterprises like Apple, and the two sides lack the foundation for cooperation.
In this light, the reason why Alibaba can win the cooperation with Apple is essentially its advantages in data, technical capabilities and security as an e-commerce giant, but the pre-factor is that there is almost no conflict of interest in the cooperation between the two sides, and the potential geopolitical risk is the lowest.
Apple's AI Pace Needs to Be Accelerated
The new round of AI explosion, to a certain extent, has been associated with Apple from the very beginning.
On March 21, 2023, at NVIDIA's annual GTC conference, in the face of the huge impact that OpenAI's ChatGPT has brought to the entire AI industry, Jensen Huang said: a brand new computing platform has been invented, and the "iPhone moment of AI" has begun.
In this way, taking this conference as a node, "the iPhone moment of AI" has become a popular term in the industry.
Although the iPhone has no direct connection with ChatGPT, the new round of development of human science and technology history that the iPhone once set off is indeed enough to make the public believe, and to a certain extent make the public understand that AI is indeed bringing a qualitative change to the world just like the iPhone in the past.
However, from Apple's perspective, its attitude towards AI and ChatGPT always seems to be a beat slow.
In fact, after the slogan "the iPhone moment of AI has begun" became popular all over the world, China on the other side of the ocean began to embrace large models one after another — among them, Chinese smartphone industry players including Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Honor have all entered the large model track in high-profile manner.
But Apple remained quiet at the very beginning. At the WWDC developer event in June 2023, it did not mention words like ChatGPT, large model and AI at all. Even when referring to some AI-related functions, it chose to replace them with the term "machine learning".
Tim Cook mentioned in an interview after the 2023 WWDC event that he had used ChatGPT and was paying close attention to it, but it is necessary to regulate AI, and "companies also have a responsibility to self-regulate" — his words at that time showed more of a prudent attitude towards AI.
However, no one can stop the trend of history, and Apple is no exception.
Thus, in 2024, Apple officially announced Apple Intelligence at its annual WWDC event, and announced its cooperation with OpenAI at the same time. Through this cooperation, Apple integrated ChatGPT's capabilities into the experience of iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
Regarding this development, some people in the industry call it "the ChatGPT moment of iPhone".
From today's perspective, the so-called "ChatGPT moment of iPhone" has not brought much drastic change to the iPhone experience, and it has nothing to do with the Chinese market. But this is enough to show that although Apple seems to have fallen behind a lot in the AI era, it is also actively embracing changes in the tide of technological development.
However, compared with the mobile Internet era, the choices Apple faces in the AI era are more complex, more tricky, and more detached from technology — the repeated delays in the launch of Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market have illustrated this point, and these are all out of Apple's control.
In the long run, it is ultimately a difficult task for AI to move towards commercialization, implementation, and finally reach ordinary consumers and get paid by them — even a strong company like Apple has to face this trend. What's more, in this era, there are still people exploring native devices for the AI era that want to replace the iPhone.
Of course, it is never easy to replace the iPhone and smartphones.
For Apple, although it intentionally or unintentionally did not participate in the fast-paced large model competition, the good news is that it still firmly holds the hardware terminal entry for ordinary users to use AI, including devices such as iPhone, Mac and iPad. These devices, with Apple's series of chips, already have AI hardware capabilities that other players envy.
This is still Apple's advantage in the AI era; this advantage will also become a key fulcrum for Apple to maintain its competitiveness in the AI era — but in the end, how long the advantage of this fulcrum can last depends on whether Apple can speed up its AI implementation pace.
This article is from WeChat official account"Timelines", author: 308, editor: Zhou Yi, published with authorization from 36Kr.