The functions of iphone will be fed by Alibaba in China

Alibaba has announced that it is being associated with Apple to provide artificial intelligence characteristics to iPhones in China. Apple Intelligence characteristics have not yet been enabled in China, which is believed to contribute to the company's local decline in smartphone sales.

“They talked to several companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our ai to feed their phones,” the president of Alibaba, Joseph Tsai, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/alibaba-chairman-confirms-ai-partnership-with-apple-chinese-iphones-2025-02-13/”>saying. “We feel extremely honored to do business with a large company like Apple.”

The announcement does not end with speculation about which Apple local technology companies will be associated to enable their functions of ai. According to the reports, the company evaluated models of Tencent, Bytedance and Deepseek, and can still be associated with other companies. Apple “continues to work with Baidu” in “a search function with ai that can handle images and text”, along with updates to the Chinese version of Siri, according to a report by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/apple-continues-to-work-with-baidu-on-ai-features-for-iphone-in-china”>The information Posted today.

Outside China, Apple Intelligence is executed in a combination of Apple's patented technology and OpenAi chatgpt, which is not available in China. It is not clear if there will be a similar approach to the characteristics of ai in China, perhaps with multiple partners. Any artificial intelligence characteristic of ai requires regulatory approval, and according to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-partners-with-alibaba-to-develop-ai-features-for-iphone-users-in-china”>The information Apple and Alibaba have already presented materials to regulators.

IPhone sales have been decreasing in China, and in 2024 Apple lost the first place for smartphone sales, arriving in third place for the fourth quarter behind Huawei and Xiaomi. Analysts have repeatedly attributed sales lagged to the lack of iphone characteristics in the country, and Apple will be under pressure to invent the lost terrain.