Apple says Apple Intelligence will launch in China in December, backed by Alibaba's Qwen model

Apple said in a press release on its China newsroom, dated October 31, that the first Apple Intelligence features are coming to users in China. Testing starts on November 4 in the latest iOS developer beta, and the public release arrives with iOS 27.3 in December. Apple did not give an exact December date.

Apple also said it has partnered with Alibaba to support Qwen in some Apple Intelligence experiences. According to the release, as described by Business Engineer, Siri can hand certain requests to Qwen, users can ask about photos and documents such as PDFs and presentations, and a Compose feature lets Qwen write original text from scratch in system-wide Writing Tools. Users reach Qwen by signing in to a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple.

The first wave is the earlier generation of features: Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone, Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence, Clean Up and Genmoji in Photos, notification summaries, Priority Messages and Type to Siri. Business Engineer counts Qwen as named in 2 of the 18 listed features, and Apple says Apple Intelligence itself is driven by generative models it built.

Not everything is included. Apple wrote that this update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation features it announced at WWDC 2026. Supported devices are the iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Duo, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone Air, with Siri and device language set to English or Simplified Chinese. Other platforms follow once the necessary approvals are obtained.

The South China Morning Post says the rollout ends roughly two years of regulatory uncertainty in Apple's second-largest market. Tim Cook told The Paper on October 15 that Apple Intelligence had been approved in China. The release gives no financial terms for the Alibaba partnership, does not say which Siri requests go to Qwen, and offers no user or device numbers.

For developers, the practical point is that China gets a local model behind the system assistant, much as the ChatGPT integration works in other regions, as The Verge noted according to one report. If you build iPhone apps for Chinese users, join the November 4 beta and test any flow that depends on AI features, language settings or system writing tools. Expect behavior to differ from other markets, since Qwen handles some requests there.

What to watch next: the first iOS 27.3 beta, which 9to5Mac notes may not land on the same day as the testing start, the exact December date, and whether Apple adds more model partners or the missing next-generation features later.

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