Alibaba announced that she cooperates with Apple to provide artificial intelligence for the functions of the iPhone intelligence in China. Apple Intelligence functions have not yet been enabled in China, which is believed to contribute to the local decline in sales of smartphones.
“They talked to many companies in China. Finally they decided to do business with us. They want to use our artificial intelligence to power their phones ”, president of Alibaba Joseph Tsai he said. “We feel very honored by doing business thanks to a great company such as Apple.”
The announcement does not fully end speculation with which local Apple technology companies will cooperate to enable AI functions. The company reportedly evaluated models from Tencent, Bytedance and Deepseek and can continue to cooperate with other companies. Apple “continues cooperation with Baidu” on “AI power search function, which can support images and text”, along with the updates of the Chinese version of Siri, in accordance with the report with Information Published today.
Apart from China, Apple Intelligence works on a combination of reserved Apple and ChatgPT OpenAI technology, which is not available in China. It is not clear whether there will be a similar approach to the AI function in China, perhaps with many partners. All AI functions addressed to consumers require regulatory approval and according to Information Apple and Alibaba have already sent materials to regulatory bodies.
The sale of the iPhone fell in China, and in 2024 Apple lost the best place in the sale of smartphones, taking third place in the fourth quarter behind Huawei and Xiaomi. Analysts repeatedly attribute sales delaying the lack of iPhone’s AI function in the country, and Apple will be under pressure to complete the lost soil.