Alibaba on Thursday confirmed recent reports of a partnership with Apple that\u2019s set to bring AI features to iPhones sold in China. The deal is an important one for Apple, as iPhone sales have dropped precipitously in the world\u2019s largest smartphone market. The handset experienced an 11% year-over-year drop in China, according to Apple\u2019s most recent earnings report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apple \u201ctalked to a number of companies in China,\u201d Alibaba chairperson Joseph Tsai said Thursday during Dubai\u2019s World Government Summit. \u201cIn the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to reports, Apple\u2019s earlier deal with China\u2019s Baidu has been plagued with issues adapting the search giant\u2019s AI offering. Apple is also believed to have explored partnerships with ByteDance and DeepSeek, prior to settling on Alibaba. These sorts of partnerships are key to U.S. companies like Apple as they work for regulatory approval in China. Both Alibaba and Apple have reportedly submitted relevant materials to local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahead of the company\u2019s most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook cited the absence of Apple Intelligence, the company\u2019s in-house generative AI solution, as a contributing factor in slowing international sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDuring the December quarter, we saw that in markets where we had rolled out Apple Intelligence, that the year-over-year performance on the iPhone 16 family was stronger than those markets where we had not rolled out Apple intelligence,\u201d the executive told CNBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company has banked on Apple Intelligence to drive the next major iPhone \u201csuper cycle\u201d \u2013 a term referring to a dramatic uptick in device sales. Apple\u2019s speed and strategy in rolling out its own generative AI solution hampered its growth, as Google continues to deliver new Gemini features by way of Samsung phones, Pixel devices, and various other Android offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Increased domestic competition has also eaten into Apple\u2019s China market share. Vivo took the lead in the fourth quarter of last year, with 17% of the market, according to figures from research firm, Canalys. Huawei, which has seen a massive rebound following sanctions from the first Trump administration, grew shipments 37% year over year, scoring a second-place finish at 16% market share. Apple, which commanded 24% of the market the same time last year, dropped to 15%, putting it in a third-place dead heat with Xiaomi and Oppo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alibaba on Thursday confirmed recent reports of a partnership with Apple that\u2019s set to bring AI features to iPhones sold in China. The deal is an important one for Apple, as iPhone sales have dropped precipitously in the world\u2019s largest smartphone market. The handset experienced an 11% year-over-year drop in China, according to Apple\u2019s most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}