Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba's Qwen AI service
Apple has published a guide explaining how eligible Mac users in mainland China can connect Alibaba’s Qwen artificial-intelligence service to the U.S. The Mac-specific arrangement could help Apple compete in China’s AI PC market, where it has been losing market share as domestic manufacturers such…
Apple has published a guide explaining how eligible Mac users in mainland China can connect Alibaba’s Qwen artificial-intelligence service to the U.S. The Mac-specific arrangement could help Apple compete in China’s AI PC market, where it has been losing market share as domestic manufacturers.
Qwen is Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba’s family of generative-AI models, which can create text and images and analyse documents, photos and other material in response to user prompts. Apple’s updated Chinese-language guide says users who opt in can use Qwen through Siri for more.
What Happened
Writing Tools can also draw on the service to create text or images from a description. Alibaba cannot use those materials to train or improve its models, according to the guide.
Mac shipments in mainland China fell 9% in the first quarter year on year to about 800,000 units, leaving it with 9% of the PC market, versus Lenovo’s 31% and fast-growing Huawei’s 16%, according.
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Key Details
Lenovo has made its Tianxi personal AI agent central to its AI-PC strategy, while Huawei is building AI functions across its HarmonyOS ecosystem. Linking Qwen to Siri and Writing Tools gives Apple a locally compliant route to offer more capable document, image.
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Why It Matters
For Alibaba, integration with Apple’s built-in software could broaden Qwen’s reach beyond its own applications and cloud services. Alibaba has said Qwen will be incorporated into Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro software in China, though Apple’s newly published.
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Apple’s guide does not identify which Qwen model will power the Mac extension.
What Reports Say
Coverage of the story so far points to:
Continued reporting by The Hindu as more details emerge
