Close on heels of the launch of the new MacBook Air with Apple, Inc.'s in-house M2 mobile processor, the Street has begun speculating on the company's future hardware products.
What Happened: Apple plans to announce a new lineup of laptops using its new, faster in-house chips in 2023, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Among the new laptops in the works are a 15-inch, larger MacBook Pro and a 12-inch laptop, Gurman said. This is the first time that Apple would make a laptop of 15-inch screen size and this product will likely launch in the spring of 2023, he added.
The 12-inch laptop would likely arrive by the end of 2023 or in early 2024, the Apple writer said. If this laptop lives to see the light of the day, it would mark Apple's smallest laptop since 2019, when it discontinued the 12-inch MacBook.
Gurman also noted that when the 12-inch laptop was launched in 2015 with a slim frame, it came under flak for keyboard issues and sometimes even sluggish performance.
The columnist said it isn't clear yet whether the 12-inch laptop currently being considered will be a low- or high-end device that is part of the MacBook Pro lineup.
Apple is considering launching new high-end MacBook Pros, with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips as early as the end of the current year, Gurman said. The analyst did not rule out the possibility of the launch being pushed to early 2023.
A new 13-inch MacBook Pro with the same M2 chip as the newly-announced MacBook Air will likely be released in July.
Why It's Important: Mac was Apple's second most important hardware after the iPhone. Mac sales accounted for 10.7% of the company's total revenues in the March quarter of 2022. Mac sales have picked up momentum after Apple decided to ditch its long-time supplier Intel Corporation in favor of chips developed in-house.
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