Recently, Hong Kong stocks and Apple concept stocks have undergone changes.The stock prices of many Apple supply chain companies such as AAC Technology, BYD Electronics, Shunyu Optics, Qiutai Technology, Tongda Group and Fuzhikang Group all rose to varying degrees.On the news front, the US media wildly rumored that Apple and Alibaba plan to join hands to develop AI functions for China iPhone users.

Looking back on Apple's AI development history, although Apple Intelligence, a personal intelligence system for iPhones, iPads and Macs, was released last year, the China version of AI is not expected to be officially launched until April 2025.Apple CEO Cook has also publicly admitted that Apple does have a certain degree of lag in AI technology.This current situation will undoubtedly have an impact on Apple's brand image in the hearts of consumers around the world.

Looking back at the domestic market, China's local manufacturers are developing vigorously in the AI field.Huawei and Xiaomi have already seized a first-mover advantage in the field of "end-side AI"; the Pangu Model 5.0 equipped with Huawei's Mate 70 series has also shown a very high level; Xiaomi relies on its independently developed "MiLM" model to continuously optimize its interactive experience in photography and voice, and gradually gain a foothold in the fierce market competition and emerge-all of which pose a threat to Apple's domestic market.

In addition, AI applications in the mobile phone market have also been borrowed by domestic manufacturers to accelerate access.According to incomplete statistics, major domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Glory, OPPO, and ZTE Nubia have successively announced that they have successfully connected the DeepSeek-R1 model to mobile phones.International giant Samsung is also actively deploying and cooperating with Beijing Zhipu Huazhang to customize Chinese AI functions for the Galaxy S25 series.

Affected by this, Apple's Greater China financial report was slightly weak.In fiscal year 2024, Apple's revenue in Greater China fell by 7.7% year-on-year, with a decline of 11% in the fourth quarter.The continuous improvement of the competitiveness of local brands in China continues to squeeze Apple's market share.However, Apple's AI function "Apple Intelligence" failed to launch in the China market in time, which has undoubtedly become an important factor in the decline in its sales.

In order to break this unfavorable situation, Apple has begun to conduct comprehensive testing of models of China artificial intelligence developers since 2023.Last year, Apple selected Baidu as its main partner to jointly promote the implementation of AI functions in the China market.However, during the cooperation process, Baidu failed to meet Apple's extremely strict standards in terms of model development progress and technical indicators, and the cooperation between the two parties encountered bottlenecks.Since then, Apple has re-evaluated the models of companies such as Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba and Deepseek.After multiple rounds of screening, Alibaba, which is located in Hangzhou with its headquarters, was finally selected.

The reason why Alibaba stands out is due to its significant advantages in many aspects.

First of all, Alibaba has a large and highly skilled team of engineers, and rich project management experience can ensure the efficient and orderly advancement of cooperation projects.Its independently developed "Tongyi Thousand Questions" large language model (Qwen series) performs well in key indicators such as Chinese semantic understanding and multimodal processing.

In addition, Alibaba has accumulated a large amount of user behavior data based on its long-term exploration of e-commerce, payment, logistics and other fields in the China market.These valuable data resources can provide solid data support for the localized customization of Apple's AI functions.At the same time, Alibaba's localized deployment of data centers also fundamentally ensures that Apple's AI functions strictly comply with domestic regulatory requirements, effectively eliminating potential risks in data security and compliance.

Industry experts generally believe that if the cooperation between Apple and Alibaba can be successfully achieved, it will be a major turning point for Apple in the China market.It will not only significantly enhance Apple's competitiveness in the China market and reverse the unfavorable situation of continued sluggish iPhone sales, but will also further support the market's "bullish expectations" for Apple's iPhone 17 expected to launch this fall.

For Alibaba, this cooperation will not only help Apple improve its AI application capabilities, but also create more opportunities for itself to cooperate in depth with international technology giants, helping Alibaba further consolidate its leadership in the global artificial intelligence market. Position and enhance brand influence.

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