After a two-year wait, Chinese users are finally witnessing the dawn of Apple AI's localization journey in China.

On July 15, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Announcement on the Filing of Seven Generative AI Services for Mobile Devices," revealing that Apple's "Apple Intelligence" large-scale model had been filed on July 8, specifically tailored for iPhones.

Similar to its global approach, Apple is not solely relying on a single in-house model for Apple Intelligence. Instead, it adopts a strategy of "in-house model + external model augmentation."

According to Kuaikeban Daily, Alibaba's QianWen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence, offering text and image comprehension, content generation, and other functionalities. Baidu, on the other hand, will primarily bolster Apple Intelligence with AI-driven search and information retrieval capabilities.

Overall, Alibaba's QianWen assumes a role akin to Google within Apple Intelligence, handling complex reasoning tasks in the cloud. Baidu continues its role as Siri's default search engine, primarily serving as a search technology provider to enable AI-powered web information retrieval for Apple devices.

Although Apple Intelligence is poised to launch in the Chinese market with the support of Alibaba, Baidu, and others, Apple cannot afford to be complacent. Due to the absence of a robust in-house large-scale model, as AI agents mature, Apple's control will diminish, and over time, its competitive edge may erode.

Why Did Apple Opt for Alibaba for Apple Intelligence's China Entry?

As a tech giant with a strong inclination for control, Apple initially aimed to achieve AI transformation independently. However, due to slower-than-anticipated progress in developing its own large-scale models and the "delay" of Apple Intelligence showcased at WWDC 2024, Apple began recalibrating its AI strategy and actively sought partnerships with external large-scale model providers.

In the Chinese market, given the stringent regulatory landscape for AI, Apple needed to select local suppliers. According to media reports, Apple has engaged with domestic large-scale model providers such as Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance in recent years, seeking technical support for Apple Intelligence's China entry.

Although Apple has never officially disclosed its Chinese large-scale model partner, Alibaba executives revealed over a year ago that the company would collaborate with Apple on AI technology.

At the World Government Summit in Dubai in March 2025, Alibaba co-founder and chairman Joe Tsai stated, "Apple has always been highly selective. They engaged with multiple Chinese companies and ultimately chose us as their partner. We feel incredibly fortunate and honored to collaborate with such a prestigious company."

This raises the question: Neither in terms of large-scale model performance nor market influence in consumer-facing AI applications does Alibaba hold a clear advantage over other domestic large-scale model providers. Why did Apple choose to partner with Alibaba?

The answer lies in the fact that, given the need to serve hundreds of millions of users, Apple's AI technology does not require a large-scale model that excels in benchmarks but rather a supplier with balanced and comprehensive capabilities.

According to The Information, the Chinese version of Apple Intelligence initially chose to partner with Baidu, with Apple even covering the costs of training Baidu's large-scale model.

However, Baidu's Wenxin large-scale model fell short in responsiveness, failing to meet Apple's stringent requirements. To enhance model performance, Baidu sought to retain and analyze data generated by Apple users interacting with AI features—a demand that Apple, which places utmost importance on user privacy protection, found unacceptable.

In contrast, Alibaba's QianWen aligns closely with Apple Intelligence's needs in terms of both model performance and commercialization capabilities.

From a model perspective, QianWen is one of the few full-stack large-scale model technology platforms in the industry, achieving full-scenario coverage—from high-intensity reasoning to local real-time responsiveness—through its "edge, cloud, and multimodal" architecture, matching Apple Intelligence's technical framework.

Additionally, as a leading cloud service provider in China, Alibaba Cloud offers ample computational resources and extensive engineering experience to ensure stability and responsiveness when meeting Apple's high-concurrency, high-computational AI demands.

Apple-Alibaba Collaboration: A Win-Win Deal

Apple's decision not to publicly disclose its large-scale model supplier in China is primarily aimed at downplaying the prominence of external large-scale model providers and reinforcing the perception of Apple Intelligence as the core gateway.

In other words, Apple does not want its AI ecosystem to be dominated by third-party large-scale model providers but rather views external models as replaceable capability modules. Whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, or QianWen, model providers are only responsible for delivering underlying AI capabilities, while Apple firmly controls user relationships and system gateways at the upper layers.

To enhance autonomy, after its collaboration with OpenAI fell through, Apple abandoned the "zero-cost" mutually beneficial model and instead began directly paying third-party large-scale model providers for their technology.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple pays Google approximately $1 billion annually to use the Gemini large-scale model. Similarly, The Information reported that Apple paid Baidu $10 billion to use the Wenxin large-scale model, covering the computational costs of training and fine-tuning the model.

Thus, it is highly likely that Apple will also pay Alibaba a substantial "technical service fee" for Apple Intelligence's China entry.

While Alibaba stands to gain significant financial benefits from its collaboration with Apple, its ambitions may extend beyond that.

Because Alibaba is not just a model provider—it is an internet behemoth with ecosystem resources spanning e-commerce, instant retail, payments, and more.

As AI technology matures, Alibaba is focusing on deploying AI agents centered around QianWen. In January 2026, QianWen announced its integration with Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, including Taobao, Alipay, and Fliggy, enabling AI-powered shopping functions such as ordering food, making purchases, and booking flights.

In response, Wu Jia, president of QianWen's consumer business group, stated, "After acquiring a super-powerful brain, AI is now growing hands and feet to interact with the real world, truly working for users in their daily lives. We will steadily advance to make the QianWen App the most powerful human AI assistant, ensuring AI truly helps everyone."

By integrating with Apple Intelligence, Alibaba not only gains access to Apple's massive user base but can also leverage "user intent interpretation rights" and "service scheduling rights" to subtly deploy its own ecosystem services on Apple devices, fulfilling user needs.

It is evident that Apple's collaboration with Alibaba is, in essence, a win-win deal.

Apple hopes to leverage Alibaba's reliable AI capabilities to localize Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market. On the one hand, Alibaba gains direct financial benefits; on the other, it has the opportunity to embed QianWen's agent services into Apple's AI assistant—a core gateway—significantly expanding its ecosystem's reach and conversion efficiency.

Agents Emerge as a New Force, Challenging Apple's Closed Ecosystem

On the surface, Apple appears to hold the upper hand in its collaboration with Alibaba, given its power to select model providers. However, when considering the characteristics of AI technology, Apple is actually in a passive position.

In the mobile internet era, Apple's competitive moat is built on its closed, integrated hardware-software ecosystem. By creating a differentiated user experience, Apple not only generates substantial revenue from hardware products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac but also earns significant profits through software services like the App Store.

However, as AI technology advances deeper into commercialization, Apple's past competitive advantages, built on its ecosystem, face the risk of collapse.

Currently, tech companies like OpenAI, Alibaba, and ByteDance are driving AI assistants beyond the Chatbot paradigm, transforming them into task-executing agents that serve as core gateways for users to access various services.

In this context, the value of iOS, Siri, the App Store, and other gateways will diminish. Because agents possess "user intent interpretation rights" and "service scheduling rights," the authority to distribute mobile applications will shift from operating systems to AI platforms.

Since Siri's capabilities rely on third-party large-scale models, the iOS system cannot control the paths through which agents execute tasks, naturally reducing Apple's ecological dominance and influence in the AI era.

Given that agents are set to spark a new wave of smartphone innovation, AI companies like StepFun, ByteDance, and OpenAI are increasingly investing in "native agent smartphones," aiming to create a new "iPhone moment."

For example, on July 13, 2026, StepFun launched the native agent smartphone STEPX Neo, featuring the agent-native operating system Step AOS and the built-in personal agent "Step Amoo," capable of handling travel bookings, daily purchases, local services, and more in one place.

Similarly, at WAIC 2026, which opened on July 17, Doubao collaborated with Nubia to launch the AI agent smartphone Nubia NaviX Ultra, equipped with the Doubao mobile assistant, supporting task execution with a single voice command.

While products like STEPX Neo and NaviX Ultra currently lack the market influence of the iPhone, their innovative concepts signal a subtle shift in the competitive logic of the smartphone industry.

In the future, the core factor driving consumer purchases will no longer be feature-richness or ecosystem prosperity but rather the ability to deeply understand user needs and efficiently execute corresponding tasks.

As StepFun Chairman Yin Qi stated, "The entry of agents into the real world brings not just capability leaps but also order reconstruction."

With the smartphone industry set to undergo drastic changes, Apple Intelligence's filing does not mean Apple has won the Chinese AI market—it merely secures Apple an entry ticket to the AI era.

Apple Intelligence's entry into China solves the problem of "whether Apple has AI" but does not answer the challenge of "how to win in the AI era."

As agents gradually become the new gateway connecting users and services, relying on "external" large-scale models, Apple will find it difficult to replicate its success from the mobile internet era.