On February 20th, Apple announced that Apple Intelligence is available in localized English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and the U.S. Additional languages — including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified), English (Singapore), and English (India) — will be available in April, with more languages coming over the course of the year, including Vietnamese. 

This news was released alongside the launch of the latest iPhone 16 series model, the iPhone 16e, with a starting price of $599.

Since the launch of Apple's "Apple Intelligence" strategy in 2024, its AI capabilities have garnered global attention. Rumors had been circulating about potential collaborators and the release timeline for the Chinese version of Apple AI. Internet giants like Baidu, Tencent, ByteDance, and emerging AI player DeepSeek were all speculated as potential partners.

In the end, Apple chose to collaborate with Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi large model. This partnership was officially confirmed by Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai at the 2025 World Government Summit held in Dubai on February 13. Tongyi's large model has performed impressively on Hugging Face's global open-source model leaderboard, with numerous derivative models and a high download rate.

The introduction of Apple's Chinese AI version will be rolled out with iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4 systems. Domestic users will soon be able to experience Apple's AI features in Chinese, including voice interaction, image generation, and personalized recommendations.

The iPhone 16e, launched today, is the lowest-priced model supporting Apple Intelligence, making it more accessible for users to experience Apple's smart features at a lower cost. Pre-orders begin on February 21, with the product hitting the shelves on February 28.