Cook says China is key to iPhone Duo’s success

Apple's first foldable smartphone is manufactured exclusively in China and Chinese app developers are crucial to iPhone Duo's success, Tim Cook, Apple's executive chairman, said in a recent exclusive interview with China Daily in Beijing.

The remarks underline the great importance of China to United States tech companies such as Apple, as China is not just a huge market, but also an innovation center and a key manufacturing hub for their global operations, experts said.

Cook said Chinese developers' enthusiasm for the foldable device and China's manufacturing capabilities are part of the recipe behind iPhone Duo's success.

"We are working with a number of developers and optimizing some of the things at (our) Shanghai developer center. The apps are extremely important to us, and we're helping hand in hand," he said, adding that Chinese developers play a critical role in that process and they're very innovative.

"China's market for foldables is second to none," Cook added.

As Apple's first foldable model, iPhone Duo is far more difficult to manufacture than previous products. According to Apple, the process requires strong manufacturing precision and design capabilities, and it manages that through close collaboration with suppliers.

Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said, "China's decades of experience in electronics manufacturing and its continued push to pursue advanced and smart manufacturing make it the only country capable of making complicated products such as iPhone Duo."

Cook is on a multi-stop visit to China, touring cities including Guangzhou in Guangdong province, Beijing and Shanghai. On Friday, Cook said at a forum in Shanghai that China's artificial intelligence application landscape is showing unprecedented dynamism, and AI is already having a profound impact on Apple's supply chain.

During the trip, the senior executive also said that Apple Intelligence — which incorporates Chinese tech company Alibaba's Qwen large language model — has received approval in China and a test version is set to launch later this month.

On Thursday, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met Cook in Beijing, where they exchanged views on issues including China-US economic and trade relations. Notably, Cook said that Apple will further expand its business in China.

Cook's visit came amid a wave of top US business executives' recent visits to China.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, also visited Beijing this week.

Sean Stein, president of the US-China Business Council, said the planet's most innovative companies are concentrated in the US and China, which lays a solid foundation for wider cooperation.

"Such collaboration stretches well beyond one, two or even three industries — a reflection of a deliberate effort by firms on both sides to learn from each other and forge partnerships across the globe," Stein said.

According to a report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China earlier this year, 75 percent of enterprises it surveyed plan to reinvest in China in 2026, and over the next three to five years, its member companies are expected to reinvest $13.79 billion in profits generated in China.

Gong Yu, founder and CEO of Chinese video-streaming company iQiyi — which Cook visited during his trip — said the ties between the two companies can be dated back to 2010.

"Innovation in hardware, including the application of AI technology, has given us a particularly good synergy. This kind of mechanism allows us to achieve one plus one bigger than two, enabling this synergy to unleash even greater value," Gong said.