After a two-year wait, Apple Intelligence for China-market iPhones has finally passed regulatory filing and will integrate Qwen.
Article by: WeChat Official Account 'Synced'
Just now, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced that seven on-device generative AI services—Apple Intelligence, Huawei Xiaoyi AI large model, OPPO AndesGPT large model, vivo BlueOS on-device large model, Xiaomi HyperOS AI, Samsung Galaxy AI, and nubia Doubao mobile large model—have passed regulatory filing.
Announcement on the Filing of Seven Mobile On-Device Generative AI Services
This marks the largest collective regulatory approval to date in China's mobile on-device AI sector.
Counting from its debut at WWDC in June 2024, mainland Chinese users have waited two years for Apple's AI features.
Alibaba's Qwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence as an AI capability, offering mainland Chinese users across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS functionalities including text and image understanding and content generation.
In response to this news, Alibaba stated:
Alibaba's Qwen will be integrated into Apple Intelligence as an AI capability, delivering intelligent experiences to mainland Chinese users on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS.
Users will be able to directly access Qwen’s capabilities—such as text and image understanding and content generation—on Apple devices without switching between apps.
Regulatory filing is the compliance ticket to market entry, but before Apple obtained this permit, mainland Chinese users had already experienced a brief preview.
On March 31 this year—the eve of Apple’s 50th anniversary—an 'Apple Intelligence and Siri' entry unexpectedly appeared in the Settings menu of mainland Chinese iPhones.
No launch event, no press release— the feature went live and was quickly pulled offline.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman believes this was an accidental rollout: Apple would not launch its China-market AI without any promotional activity, nor would it choose to release it in the middle of the night in China. Moreover, visual recognition relied on Google's engine rather than a domestic one, which is unreasonable in the Chinese context, especially since regulatory approval had not yet been granted.
The brief real-world test results can be summed up in two words: fast, but rough.
The speed of the on-device model delivers the most immediate user experience.
Text polishing, information summarization, and AI-powered object removal all respond with virtually no perceptible delay.
A 200-character draft, when tapped with 'Rewrite in professional tone,' produces results in under two seconds.
Image Playground supports generating images from text descriptions, producing outputs in three to five seconds—but the phone noticeably heats up.
All processing occurs locally on the device, with no data uploaded to the cloud, ensuring privacy—at the cost of precision.
Summarizing complex, lengthy texts sometimes omits key details, and tone adjustments occasionally yield unnatural phrasing.
AI-powered object removal works adequately against simple backgrounds but reveals shadow remnants, blurred edges, and broken textures in complex scenes.
Writing tools, translation, and visual recognition—each is functional, yet each noticeably lags behind competitors that leverage cloud-based large models.
Apple made a trade-off between privacy and performance, choosing the former.
Although the leaked March version was pulled offline within less than a day, it prematurely revealed the capability limits of Apple Intelligence on mainland China models: on-device models run fast and safeguard privacy, but their depth and accuracy must be supplemented by cloud-based models.
There has been no clear or reliable confirmation regarding the specific models previously integrated.
Apple did not pass the filing process alone.
Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung, and Nubia also received approval on the same day, with all seven smartphone makers’ on-device AI systems collectively passing regulatory review.
Nubia’s Doubao smartphone large model is expected to debut during WAIC.
For Apple, the cost of being late is already reflected in its financial results.
iPhone sales in China have faced sustained pressure, and Cook previously acknowledged on an earnings call that the absence of Apple Intelligence was one reason for its declining competitiveness.
Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO have long integrated AI features as standard in their flagship devices, with some brands even incorporating models like DeepSeek, widening the user experience gap.
Earlier at WWDC 26, Apple unveiled a new generation of Siri AI developed in collaboration with Google and built on Gemini, supporting cross-app contextual awareness and natural conversation—even capable of pulling real-time email and calendar information during phone calls.
However, Apple also made it clear at the time that the new Siri AI would not be immediately available in the Chinese market.
The AI foundation for China-market iPhones is Alibaba’s Qwen, which differs from the technology stack used overseas.
Apple has made no commitments regarding the official launch timeline or the completeness of features.
While regulatory filing resolves compliance issues, there are still engineering steps to complete between filing and product rollout—including version adaptation, feature trimming, and model fine-tuning.
For China-market iPhone users, the true value of this AI entry ticket hinges on one thing: whether Apple Intelligence appears in the next iOS update release notes—and how many features are retained.
Until then, the final step remains in a two-year wait.
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