From Casey Hall
Its president said on Thursday that Shanghai (Reuters) -Apple will participate with APLE to support IPHONE services in China, that the step that the American company is likely to help reduce smart phone sales in its main market.
For Alibaba, this partnership is a great victory in the competitive artificial intelligence market in China, which is home to Deepseek, which leads this year's newspaper addresses with models developed at the cost of its western competitors.
The historical deal also solves months of speculation about the Apple AI strategy in the region where the iPhone maker was holding talks with Chinese technology leaders including Baidu, Bytedance, Tencent, Reuters and Information.
“They spoke to a number of companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our artificial intelligence to operate their phones. At the Global Government Summit in Dubai,” Tsai said.
While Apple phones outside China use a mixture of its Apple intelligence and Chatgpt from Openai, TSAI did not specify whether the alibaba partnership will follow a similar model.
In China, artificial intelligence products facing the consumer require organizational approval, and the information that has been reported earlier that both alibaba and Apple have already provided materials to the authorities.
Hong Kong's shares on Hong Kong jumped up to 9.2 % to $ 124.3 Hong Kong, the highest level since January 2022.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Instead of watching the Alibaba-Apple partnership through the lens of artificial intelligence power in China, the partnership is essentially a recognition of the ability of AI in Alibaba,” said Lyan Jay Soo, Senior Technology Research Company in Amdia.
Other analysts said the effect of Apple depends on the speedy offering of its features in China.
“It will not be an easy battle because local competitors were marketing artificial intelligence features strongly,” said Will Wong, an IDC analyst for research.
Critical time
The integration of artificial intelligence comes at a critical time for Apple, which faced a decrease in iPhone sales in China amid increasing competition from local competitors, especially Huawei.
Industry analysts have indicated the absence of advanced artificial intelligence features – a major sale point in the last smartphones of generation – as a great care for Apple in the Chinese market.
Apple has suffered a noticeable setback in China in 2024, and has lost its crown as a pioneer of smartphones in the country. In the first quarter of the fiscal year ending December 28, Greater Apple sales decreased by 11 % to $ 18.51 billion.
According to the Canalys Market, the annual Apple shipments in China decreased by 17 %, allowing local manufacturers to apostasy.
Vivo acquired the largest share in the market by 17 %, while Huawei ranked second by 16 %, prompting Apple to third place by 15 % of the market.
Alibaba has become a favorite of Chinese artificial intelligence among investors in early 2025, with a share price of more than 40 % so far this year.
In late January, the company released a new version of the QWEN 2.5 artificial intelligence model, which said that its job exceeded Deepseek-V3, which caused an uproar earlier this year because of its ability and a low cost.
(Participated in the reports of Casey Hall William Mo; edited by Ann Marie Rouantry, Shri Navarenam and Alex Richardson)