Last month, journalist Tim Culpan reported that Apple was going to have to make some hard decisions about the MacBook Neo, because the laptop was selling more than the company expected and, as a result, the supply of A18 Pro chips was dwindling rapidly.
Now Culpan reports that Apple has decided how it will solve the problem:
Apple recently made its decision and opted to put more units of the Neo in customer hands… As a result, it’s now asking suppliers to prepare capacity for 10 million units of the debut version of the Neo, up from an initial estimate of 5 million to 6 million, my sources tell me.
This renewed commitment to meeting demand means Apple must also ask TSMC for a hot lot of A18 Pro chips, the same processor used in the iPhone 16 Pro. The system-on-chip is made using TSMC’s N3E process, with the initial production run underway at least two years ago.
The net result of this is that the cost of making MacBook Neos is going to go up, but Apple has (quite rightly, in my opinion) decided that it’s more important to keep MacBook Neo momentum rolling than to maintain higher margins.
