Apple Intelligence is coming to China in December, with Alibaba's Qwen built into Siri

The skim

• Apple Intelligence is finally coming to iPhones in mainland China. Apple says testing starts Nov. 4 in the next iOS developer beta, and the features ship to everyone with iOS 27.3 in December.
• Alibaba's Qwen is built in. Users in China can reach it from Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, including to ask about photos, PDFs and presentations.
• It's a partial launch: no Siri AI, no Image Playground and none of the features Apple announced at WWDC 2026. It's iPhone only for now, on iPhone 15 Pro and newer models.

What happened

Apple announced the rollout in a Chinese-language press release on its China Newsroom, dated Oct. 31. The first batch is a familiar list for anyone outside China: Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone (and in person with recent AirPods), Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence, Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, natural-language photo search, Memories movies, Priority Messages and summaries in Mail, Smart Reply, notification summaries and priority notifications, the Reduce Interruptions Focus, and summaries of transcribed calls and Notes recordings. Siri also gets Type to Siri, which Apple says follows along even if you stumble over your words and keeps context across a conversation.

The Chinese twist is the partner. Apple says it has teamed up with Alibaba, so Siri in China can hand certain requests to Alibaba's Qwen model, users can ask about photos and documents such as PDFs and presentations, and a Compose feature in Writing Tools lets Qwen write original content from scratch. Users sign in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple. Supported phones are the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, with both the device and Siri set to English or Simplified Chinese. Apple says support for other platforms will come once the necessary approvals are granted. MacRumors notes that Image Playground isn't on the list. MacRumors says the Nov. 4 beta date likely means Nov. 3 in the US because of the time difference.

Why it matters

China is one of Apple's biggest markets, yet iPhone owners there have gone without Apple Intelligence since it debuted elsewhere in 2024. That has left the iPhone missing its marquee software feature in a market where it competes with local brands. According to 9to5Mac, the launch follows a long back-and-forth with regulators: Reuters reported in July that it had cleared a major hurdle, and Bloomberg said this month it would arrive in iOS 27.3 without Siri AI.

For Alibaba, the deal puts Qwen one tap away inside Siri and the system-wide Writing Tools on every supported iPhone in China. For Apple, it means using a local partner's model for the chatbot-style requests, while its own models handle features like translation, summaries and Clean Up.

What's next

Developers get the beta next week, and the public release comes in December with iOS 27.3, though Apple hasn't given a date. The bigger features, Siri AI and the WWDC 2026 additions, aren't part of this rollout, and Apple hasn't said when they'll come. Mac and iPad users in China still have to wait for regulators.

Sources: Apple (China Newsroom), MacRumors and 9to5Mac.