If you log onto Chinese social media these days, you might encounter many young people expressing the “involution” or neijuan (內卷) mentality. It has become a buzzword for a generation of college students and recent graduates beaten down by society’s relentless competition, and roughly translates to rolling inwards.
You also might stumble upon new selfies of Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook, who was back in China last week for his first visit of the year. The US business leader and de facto diplomat between the geopolitical nemeses had a packed itinerary: meeting officials in Beijing, stopping by a local Apple store and visiting students in Hangzhou, among other events. As usual, he chronicled much of his journey via bilingual Weibo posts.
So far, there has been no official updates on the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the country. However, his trip comes as competition in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector has become ferocious, revitalized by the success of DeepSeek (深度求索) and fresh top-down government support. Meanwhile, domestic smartphone rivals have been much quicker to incorporate the buzzy technology into devices. iPhone sales have seen a precipitous drop, falling more than 18 percent in the December quarter last year. On a recent earnings call, Cook called China “the most competitive market in the world.”
Bringing the AI iPhone features to China at a time of hyper-competition is fraught, and it would be hard for Apple to not feel the pains of involution. However, there are reasons to believe that the tech giant has a unique opportunity to get that right in a way that it has noticeably not done elsewhere.
In being forced by regulators to work with local partners — it has chosen Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Baidu Inc (百度) — the company would have to loosen the reins it famously likes to hold tight. However, with its in-house AI efforts sputtering, that could end up being a blessing. For Apple to overcome involution in China, it must find a way to invigorate local tech talent — who have been flooding the market with AI products — to build those services for the iPhone.
It has been an unusually rocky few weeks for Apple outside of China, when even the most long-standing Apple supporters seemed to realize the company was much further behind on AI than initially thought. It indefinitely delayed some of its most exciting updates that were advertised to sell its iPhone 16. The AI features that have arrived have been imperfect, to put it mildly. The company is also undergoing a rare leadership shake-up to address some of those issues.
Back in China, the Apple Intelligence delay has been ominous. AI could ultimately be what makes or breaks the future of the iPhone, especially in this market, where personal demand for such services is enormous. If Apple does not keep pace, it could see AI-enabled rivals crush its most valuable product the same way the iPhone did to the BlackBerry soon after launch. The company is expected to finally bring Apple Intelligence to China by the middle of this year, likely next month. It cannot come soon enough.
The delay has also given time for China’s AI sector to explode at a rapid clip. It has driven down the cost for developers building new services and products on top of existing models. The more Apple opens its iPhone to support those tools, the more it can meet the moment.
Geopolitical tensions still loom as large as ever. Cook’s visit notably came ahead of Liberation Day, when US President Donald Trump promised to unleash a fresh round of tariffs, and it is still not clear if Apple would be exempt from new levies. Critics are not wrong to question how tenable the relationship between Apple and China is, or the consequences of the company making itself beholden to Beijing by concentrating its supply chains in the country. However, the reality now is that Apple’s entanglement with China has only grown. And at this stage, it might not just be relying on Chinese talent for its hardware, but also to keep pace in the AI race.
Earlier this week, Cook made a pit stop at Zhejiang University to donate about US$4 million to a fund for young coders at the same school that produced the founder of DeepSeek. Apple also reportedly hosted a virtual session for Chinese developers on Apple Intelligence offerings — who might be among the growing pool of engineers that end up building the products and services that the AI iPhone’s future depends on.
State-backed media quoted Cook as saying that he predicts “more Chinese apps will become popular overseas, because the creativeness of Chinese developers is second to none.”
Let us hope he is correct. If Apple wants to reverse the involution of the iPhone in China, it is going to need all the help it can get.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.
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