Apple Intelligence reportedly launches in China in December on iOS 27.3 with Alibaba models

Bloomberg reported that Apple plans a December China launch of Apple Intelligence inside iOS 27.3. It will exclude the new Siri AI assistant and other features announced this year, as well as Apple's in-house image generation tools. Some text generation features will be limited in certain apps. The first release is expected to include Genmoji, notification summaries, writing tools and Clean Up in Photos. The platform runs with guardrails developed with Alibaba, including a filter that lets the government approve ongoing model updates. Apple is also working with Baidu on search and Siri related features. Apple received Chinese permits on September 29 covering Apple Intelligence and Alibaba models, including Tongyi Wanxiang and Qwen. Bloomberg noted rivals such as Huawei and Xiaomi already ship broader AI features in China. For AI builders, this is a large distribution win for Qwen in the world's biggest handset market, and it shows the compliance path: a local model partner plus government-reviewable updates. Foreign model vendors still face a closed door there.