Apple Intelligence reaches China in iOS 27.3 beta from Nov. 4

Apple has announced, via its Chinese newsroom website, that Apple Intelligence will begin testing in China on November 4 in an upcoming iOS developer beta. The public rollout is scheduled for December with the full release of iOS 27.3. MacRumors spotted the press release first.

The launch is a reduced version of what other markets have. The new Siri AI is not part of it. Users in China will instead get an improved Siri experience that includes Type to Siri, plus access to Alibaba’s Qwen chatbot for certain requests. Qwen will also work inside Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Apple says people can ask questions about photos and documents, including PDFs and presentations, and can generate original text through Writing Tools. Access requires signing in to a Qwen account or using Sign in with Apple.

Other features in the first wave:

• Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone
• Genmoji and Clean Up in Photos
• Natural-language photo search
• Priority notifications, notification summaries and Smart Reply

Only the iPhone is covered at first. Apple says other platforms will follow once the required regulatory approvals are in place. Supported models are the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, every iPhone 16 and newer, the iPhone Air and the iPhone Duo. Both Siri and the device language must be set to English or Simplified Chinese.

The sources differ slightly on the date. The Verge describes the iOS 27.3 beta as launching November 4. 9to5Mac points out that Apple confirmed November 4 only as the start of China testing, which is not necessarily the day iOS 27.3 beta 1 appears.

Why it matters

The launch follows a long approval process. Reuters reported in July that Apple Intelligence had cleared a major regulatory hurdle in China, and Bloomberg later reported that Apple planned a December launch in iOS 27.3 without Siri AI and other newer features. State-backed outlet The Paper said Tim Cook had confirmed the approval. Apple’s own release now puts dates on those reports.

The Verge compares the Qwen integration to the ChatGPT integration that came to iOS in 2024. Reuters reported in August that Apple trained its own language model specifically for China.

The gap with other regions is also visible in recent releases. Last Monday, iOS 27.2 added Siri AI support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and Apple said four more languages, including Traditional Chinese, would arrive by the end of the year. That announcement said nothing about Apple Intelligence in China, where Siri AI stays unavailable for now.

What we don’t know yet

Apple has not said when other platforms will get the features, or whether Siri AI will eventually reach China. The exact day iOS 27.3 beta 1 ships is also unconfirmed.