Apple and Samsung turn to Chinese AI partners to compete in the world’s biggest smartphone market

Western and South Korean phone makers are reportedly turning to Chinese AI partners to deliver advanced features in the world’s biggest smartphone market.

Apple has formalized a strategic partnership with Alibaba Group to power key parts of Apple Intelligence for users in mainland China. Alibaba’s Qwen model will handle server-side text generation, visual context queries, and more complex Siri processing. On-device tasks like basic photo editing and translation will still run on Apple’s own foundation models. The features are already available for testing in the latest iOS developer beta and are expected to roll out publicly with iOS 27.3 in December.

This setup closely mirrors what Samsung has been doing. The South Korean company has worked with Baidu since the Galaxy S24 series, using the Ernie model to power Galaxy AI features in China, including visual search, Bixby queries, live call translation, document summarization, and related tools. That collaboration has continued and expanded with later models like the S26 series.

These partnerships help both companies meet Chinese regulatory requirements for generative AI services. They also create tighter connections to the major local digital platforms. Integrating generative capabilities with services like Alipay, Taobao, and Baidu Maps delivers contextual usefulness that purely global models often struggle to match inside China.

Industry observers point out that while these alliances solve immediate compliance and localization needs, they also raise longer-term strategic questions. Relying on domestic Chinese LLMs for core AI processing in such a large market can create dependencies and may limit how much these companies can differentiate themselves as local AI capabilities keep advancing. Neither Apple nor Alibaba has publicly detailed the full technical mechanisms used to stay compliant with Chinese content rules, though sources have indicated filtering technology is part of the solution.

Overall, the moves highlight a pragmatic reality for foreign device makers: competing effectively in China increasingly means working closely with the country’s leading AI and internet platforms.

(Source)