Apple puts Alibaba's Qwen inside Siri in China in December, with no price or revenue split public
Apple's first Apple Intelligence features for mainland China ship with iOS 27.3 in December, putting Alibaba's Qwen inside Siri and Writing Tools. No price, split or contract term is public, and the Alibaba segment that carries Qwen lost $2.04 billion last quarter.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Siri's new tenant signs in on November 4
Apple−1.30% — Apple, down 1.30 percent today confirmed on October 31 that the first Apple Intelligence features for mainland China reach developers on November 4 and ship to the public with iOS 27.3 in December, in a release on its China newsroom 1. Qwen, Alibaba's+5.33% — Alibaba, up 5.33 percent today model family, runs inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, reached through a Qwen account or Sign in with Apple; users opt in, are asked before any question, document or photo is sent, and Alibaba says requests and responses will not train its models 23.
Chief executive Eddie Wu promised Qwen "deeply integrated into experiences across the Apple ecosystem" 3. The first wave omits the rebuilt Siri shown at WWDC 2026 and starts at the iPhone 15 Pro 13. Regulators registered the service in July, 21 months after chairman Joe Tsai first promised the pairing 24, which The Inference flagged when the foldable opened for preorders.
The terms are silent and the segment bleeds
No price, revenue split or contract length is public, and no source ties a specific Qwen version to Apple's build 45. Alibaba's June quarter, the first under its new segmentation, shows what sits underneath: AI Cloud and Compute Services revenue of RMB48.4 billion ($7.14 billion), up 45%, earning RMB5.6 billion in adjusted EBITA, up 133%; AI Labs and Applications, which holds the model labs and the Qwen app, lost RMB13.86 billion ($2.04 billion) on RMB3.3 billion of revenue 6.
Capex rose 75% to RMB67.7 billion, and free cash flow was a RMB44.7 billion outflow 6. Access runs through a free sign-in, so the return is distribution: a Qwen button inside every recent Chinese iPhone, cheaper than the marketing behind the app 5.
China rebounded with no AI to sell
Apple's China business grew for three straight quarters with no AI on sale
Data
| Greater China revenue | |
|---|---|
| Sep 2025 Q | $14.49B |
| Dec 2025 Q | $25.53B |
| Mar 2026 Q | $20.5B |
| Jun 2026 Q | $18.82B |
Greater China revenue hit $64.85 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, more than the $64.37 billion booked in all of fiscal 2025, with no Apple Intelligence on sale; the December quarter alone grew 38% to $25.53 billion 5. Omdia puts Apple at 20% of China's third-quarter smartphone market against Huawei's 21% 2. December closes a feature gap, not a demand hole.
Alibaba rose about 5% on November 2, still down roughly 29% for the year 7, after an October that took 9% off the stock and 24% off the STAR 50 index, leaving it about 50% below Morningstar's fair value estimate 8.
What settles it
Apple reports after the close tonight, the first report under chief executive John Ternus, and the tell is guidance against that $25.53 billion December quarter 57. Baidu+2.60% — Baidu, up 2.60 percent today sits in the reporting as the second local partner with a role nobody has defined 45. Alibaba's next print shows whether the AI Labs loss narrows once Siri starts handing it traffic 6. Four Qwen4 models are already in preview 9. Until someone names a price, every Qwen answer inside Siri is free inference in the one market Apple could not serve alone.
Get Applications by email, free
How AI is changing the software people and companies use. In our daily email, every weekday.
