Apple will bring its 2024 Apple Intelligence features to China as soon as December if a new rumor is correct. It is expected as a part of the iOS 27.3 release.
Apple has been working to get Apple Intelligence ready for the Chinese market since it first announced the features in 2024. It was held back by strict regulatory requirements, including requiring a backend provided by a local company.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple has finally cleared all of the regulatory concerns as recently as July. The launch is said to be set for December with iOS 27.3 according to people familiar with the matter.
The backend and models will allegedly be provided by Alibaba AI. The models would be Tongyi Wanxiang and Qwen.
Apple is not bringing an equivalent to the new Apple Foundation Models built with Gemini Frontier Models to China. Instead, the region will only have access to features that originally debuted, which were weak offerings then and will seem archaic today.
Apple needs an AI presence in China due to demand for those features by Chinese customers. However, it likely doesn't need to do much with its own models when iPhone, iPad, and Mac excel at running third-party models.
Regulations won't allow Image Playground and generating text won't be allowed in some apps. The Apple Intelligence launching in China is far more limited than the one that disappointed customers in 2024.
It remains to be seen if the launch will do anything for iPhone sales in the region when competitors ship more performant models on their smartphones. That said, Apple's performance in China has held strong in spite of not having a first-party AI offering, so the Apple Intelligence rollout will likely have little to no effect in either direction.
