AI · 2 November 2026 · 4 min read
Apple will let Qwen answer inside some iPhone features in China. The test opens on 4 November
Apple’s China newsroom said on 31 October that the first Apple Intelligence features there open to developers on 4 November and ship to users in December with iOS 27.3. Alibaba said the same day that Qwen can be called from Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, after the user agrees, and that those requests will not train its models. The phone’s own model is still the release. Qwen is the extra.
The page is Apple’s, and the date on it is 31 October. The China newsroom post, reproduced by the Economic Daily, is headed as Apple Intelligence coming to China. The standfirst says the first features include live translation, the cleanup tool in Photos and writing tools, and that testing opens on 4 November. The public step is December, with iOS 27.3. That is a software update for phones already sold. It is not a new handset, and it is not a robot. Other Apple platforms, the same accounts say, wait until the approvals are in.
Qwen is a door inside that update, not the update itself. Alibaba’s statement the same day, as reported by Global Times, says users in China can use Qwen’s text and image understanding, and its content generation, inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Siri can call Qwen for an answer. A person can ask about a selected photo or a document. Apple asks before a question, a document or an image is sent. Once it is on, the user can sign in with Apple or with a Qwen account, and can choose when Qwen is used. Alibaba said the requests and the replies will not be used to train its models. A promise not to train is a line in a statement. It is not an audit.
Who gets it is narrower than “China.” Alibaba said the first availability is on iOS, for someone who bought an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone in China, or whose device region and Apple account are both set to China. Global Times, citing Apple, puts the first phones at the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone 16 and later, the iPhone Air and the iPhone Duo, with the device and Siri set to English or simplified Chinese. A list of models is not a count of phones that will turn the feature on. In June, Apple’s own note on the newer Siri said the new assistant would not be available in China while the company worked through the rules. This October post is the first batch of features, with a Chinese model behind some of the requests. It does not say the June assistant has arrived.
What changes, if the timetable holds, is which company’s model a phone in that market may call. The on-device features in the standfirst are still Apple’s. Qwen is reached when the user sends something out, and only for the jobs the two companies have named. A developer test on 4 November is not the December release, and the December release is not evidence that a factory, a car or a humanoid in China is running the same model. A phone that can ask a second lab about a photograph is a distribution deal. It is not a machine that has been given a new hand.