Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China on Wednesday, making an unexpected stop in Hangzhou, home to AI startup DeepSeek, as part of his first official visit to the country this year. His visit comes at a time when Apple is facing declining smartphone sales in China, outpaced by competition from local tech giants.
Cook reportedly met with developers at partner Zhejiang University in the tech-infused city of Hangzhou. The startup announced a donation of RMB 30 million to support China’s next generation of developers and will collaborate with the university to launch the Apple Mobile App Incubation Fund.
The fund aims to provide technical training and courses in app development, product design, marketing, and business operations. Zhejiang University has produced some of China’s top tech talent, including Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek.
Apple noted that prior to this initiative, it had donated RMB 50 million to Zhejiang University over the past decade to support the Mobile Application Innovation Competition.
Tim Cook praises Deepseek and the ‘next generation of developers’
DeepSeek made international headlines earlier this year when it introduced an AI chatbot, DeepSeek R1, that is capable of competing with US AI models, supposedly at a fraction of the cost.
DR1 shocked the world by claiming that its initial open-ended large language models (LLM) were built with about $6 million, and its performance neared that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok.
Cook praised DeepSeek’s advancements, calling its AI models “excellent” during his visit. He also took several pictures with students around the Zhejiang campus and called them the “next generation of developers,” according to his March 26 post on Chinese social platform Weibo.
During Apple’s January 30 earnings call, Cook was asked about DeepSeek’s rapid rise and its impact on the tech industry. He responded, “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. And that’s what you see in that model.”
Cook’s tour this week also included high-level discussions with Chinese government officials. On Monday, he met with China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao during a development forum in Beijing. The two reportedly exchanged views on Apple’s business in China and broader China-US trade relations.
Apple’s falling smartphone sales in China
Apple’s visit to China is happening against the backdrop of a decline in its smartphone sales in the jurisdiction. The iPhone maker lost its position as China’s top-selling smartphone brand last year, facing competition from domestic rivals such as Huawei and Vivo.
According to Vivo Research data, cited by Bloomberg, Apple’s smartphone shipments in China dropped by 25% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and declined by 17% over the entire year. While the iPhone 16 briefly regained the top spot during the year-end period, Huawei and Vivo ultimately outperformed Apple in annual shipments.
Reports indicate that iPhone sales dropped 5% late last year, partly due to the absence of AI functionalities that are now standard in competitor devices. Huawei, for example, has already added AI capabilities in its latest smartphones, mounting more pressure on Apple to catch up.
The company is purportedly seeking partnerships with Chinese firms to improve its AI offerings. In February, Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai revealed that Apple was working with his company to bring AI-powered iPhones to China.
“They want to use our AI to power their phones, so we’re very fortunate and extremely honored to be able to do business with a great company like Apple,” Tsai said at a conference in Dubai.
In addition to his meetings with developers and government officials, Cook also announced that the popular Chinese role-playing game Wuthering Waves would be launching on Mac this week.
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