China‑specific Apple Intelligence official website officially launches: powered by Qwen, rolling out in November
Image source for the header photo: Apple On October 31, Apple’s China website Newsroom released a press release titled “Apple Intelligence Coming to China,” outlining a specific timeline: starting November 4, the first batch of Apple Intelligence features will be available for testing through the latest iOS developer beta; and when iOS 27.3 is officially released in December, these features will roll out to Chinese users. The Apple Intelligence page on Apple’s China website has also been updated. Back in September, during the launch of the iPhone 18 and iPhone Duo, the China‑specific product page listed Apple Intelligence followed by the note “Release date subject to regulatory approval.” Even this week, with the new MacBook Pro launch, that same line remained on the China‑specific page. Now, the top of the page reads: “The first core features of Apple Intelligence will launch later this year.” Counting from its debut at WWDC in June 2024, China‑specific iPhones have waited a full two and a half years. In the early hours of March 31 this year, some China‑specific iPhone users noticed that “Siri” in Settings had changed to “Apple Intelligence & Siri”; according to reports at the time, the change was reversed within about two hours, with Apple attributing it to a software issue. On July 15, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced that seven mobile‑side generative AI services had completed registration, including “Apple Intelligence” from Apple Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. On September 29, several China‑specific iPhone models—including the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro—completed their network access license renewals, with three new large‑model registration numbers added to the licensing documents, corresponding respectively to Apple Intelligence, Alibaba’s Tongyi Wanxiang, and Tongyi Qianwen. On October 15, Tim Cook, who has stepped down as CEO but remains Apple’s Executive Chairman, confirmed in an interview with The Paper in Shanghai: “We are very pleased to have received approval to bring the first core features of Apple Intelligence to Chinese users, including real-time translation, the removal tool in the Photos app, and writing tools, among others.” He also said he looks forward to delivering these features to users via a “beta version launching later this month.” However, the actual beta release ended up being delayed by a few days, landing on November 4—and only in the developer beta. For regular users to access them,
