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With Apple’s in-house AI efforts sputtering, China’s AI diktats may end up being a blessing

MacDailyNews

Mar 27

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Siri's response to the formidable question, 'What month is it?' — Siri’s response to the formidable question, ‘What month is it?’ on March 20, 2025

As of now, there are no official updates regarding the introduction of Apple Intelligence in China. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent visit coincides with intensifying competition in China’s CCP-controlled AI landscape, which has been reinvigorated by DeepSeek’s achievements and renewed government backing from the top. Meanwhile, local smartphone competitors have been far swifter in embedding this trending technology into their devices. iPhone sales have experienced a sharp decline, plummeting over 18% in the December quarter, but with Apple’s in-house AI efforts sputtering, China’s AI diktats may end up being a blessing.

Catherine Thorbecke for Bloomberg Opinion:
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Bringing the AI iPhone features to China at a time of hyper-competition is fraught, and it will be hard for Apple to not feel the pains of involution. But there are reasons to believe that the tech giant has a unique opportunity to get this right in a way that it has noticeably not done elsewhere.
In being forced by regulators to work with local partners — it’s chosen Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. — the company will have to loosen the reins it famously likes to hold tight. But with its in-house AI efforts sputtering, this could end up being a blessing. For Apple to overcome involution in China, it must find a way to invigorate local tech talent — who have been flooding the market with AI products — to build these services for the iPhone.
It’s been an unusually rocky few weeks for Apple outside of China, when even the most long-standing Apple supporters seemed to realize the company was much further behind on AI than initially thought. It indefinitely delayed some of its most exciting updates that were advertised to sell its iPhone 16. The AI features that have arrived have been imperfect, to put it mildly. The company is also undergoing a rare leadership shakeup to address some of these issues.
Back in China, the Apple Intelligence delay has been ominous. AI could ultimately be what makes or breaks the future of the iPhone, especially in this market, where personal demand for such services is enormous. If Apple doesn’t keep pace, it could see AI-enabled rivals crush its most valuable product the same way the iPhone did to the BlackBerry soon after launch. The company is expected to finally bring Apple Intelligence to China by the middle of this year, likely May. It can’t come soon enough.

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MacDailyNews Take: Yup, the sooner, the better.

As we wrote last November, “Apple Intelligence in China will be highly censored and rather limited; it will only spit back the approved narratives of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Chinese people are, unfortunately, acclimated to censorship and a lack of freedom, so iPhone sales will increase with the advent of Apple Intelligence in China, regardless of the limitations placed upon it by the Chinese Communist Party. – MacDailyNews, February 11, 2025

Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. — Potter Stewart

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