By Rolfe Winkler and Yang Jie
Apple, long revered for its premium-priced products, has managed to develop a booming business selling cheaper devices when most gadget makers are being hammered by rising costs.
One of its secrets: using chips with slight defects that might otherwise be thrown out.
The strategy is apparent in the technical minutiae of the newly released $599 MacBook Neo, which early data suggest is a hit with customers.
The chip powering the Neo is Apple's A18 Pro, the same chip first used inside the iPhone 16 Pro two years ago, but with one key difference. The Neo version of the chip has a "5-core" graphics processor, one less than the version inside the 2024 iPhones, indicating that Apple was able to save some of the A18 Pro chips with a defective core for future use.
Defective cores can be disabled, leaving a chip that still functions perfectly well to power different, often cheaper devices -- in this case an entry-level laptop instead of a top-of-the-line iPhone.
It is the latest example of Apple deploying a decades-old chip industry strategy to squeeze profits from lesser-performing processors by selling them like eggs, gas, diamonds or hotel rooms, segmented by good, better and best.
What began as a salvage operation for mobile silicon has evolved into a cornerstone of Apple's design strategy, allowing it to segment its lineup with surgical precision, achieving efficiencies that smaller rivals struggle to match, analysts said.
"If you can take the stuff that doesn't meet highest level specs and still use it, you can save money, scrap and time," says Tim Culpan, a supply-chain analyst who has written about Apple's Neo chip orders. "Also you can reach a lot more customers you might not otherwise be able to sell to."
Apple has used its flexibility with its own silicon to develop lower-priced iPhones and computers, many of which have sold well. The Neo is so popular that Apple is running low on leftover chips and has been forced to order new ones, according to people familiar with its supply chain.
Repurposing chips is one of many ways Apple takes advantage of its formidable supply chain. Lately it has weaponized prices to attract new users. The Neo is cheap enough to poach potential Chromebook and PC users; the iPhone 17e, which also uses a "binned" chip, is cheap enough to attract Android users.
Rival device makers are struggling more than Apple with the surging price of memory and storage, making lower-end devices unprofitable to sell and enabling Apple to gain market share, according to research firms Counterpoint and IDC. Every new user of an Apple device is also a potential buyer of Apple's higher-margin services, such as iCloud storage, and the App Store.
Since 2021, Apple has sold six of its A-series chips with one less GPU core in a cheaper device after the fully functional version first appeared in a more expensive iPhone, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of nearly 200 Apple documentation pages.
Apple sells more than 200 million iPhones a year. Even if a small percentage of smartphone chips don't meet specifications, Apple still has millions to repurpose. The 17e uses chips that aren't good enough for the iPhone 17. The iPhone Air uses chips that wouldn't meet specifications for the more expensive 17 Pro.
Apple makes far fewer Macs, and the M-series chips that power them. Even so, two years after rolling out with MacBook Pros, M-Series chips that lack a GPU core are used in the cheaper iPad Air.
For older chips, Apple's documentation pages don't include detailed chip specifications, but people familiar with its practices say the strategy dates back to the first chip Apple designed, the A4, which powered the first iPad, then months later the iPhone 4, and after that the second-generation Apple TV box.
A4 chips that drew too much power weren't well-suited for smartphones running on a battery, but worked just fine in the Apple TV plugged into an outlet, said people familiar with the products. Something similar happened with less efficient S7 chips, which ended up in the second-generation HomePod rather than the Apple Watch for which they were originally designed, these people said.
When Apple bought processors from suppliers like Intel or Samsung, it could pick the choicest chips they made. Now that Apple designs its own processors, it pays Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, or TSMC, to make silicon wafers filled with hundreds of chips, sometimes of varying quality.
Apple puts chips with more processing cores in devices with bigger displays and more storage to create higher-priced models.
And as it rolls out new chip designs, Apple repurposes its older chips for cheaper products. The A8 chip first appeared in 2014 in the iPhone 6, then in 2015's iPad Mini and Apple TV, and finally in 2017 in the first HomePod.
Using chips in the Neo that might otherwise be tossed is one way Apple was able to deliver its first entry-level laptop.
Yet the Neo is so popular Apple is blowing through its supply of ultracheap binned chips and recently placed fresh orders for A18 Pro silicon specifically to keep Neo production going, according to people familiar with Apple's supply chain.
That isn't as easy as it used to be. Apple gets its most advanced chips from one supplier, TSMC, which is also struggling to meet voracious demand for artificial-intelligence chips.
"Apple no longer has the flexibility it once enjoyed, and the strain is starting to show," said Ming-Chi Kuo, analyst with TF International Securities.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company is facing chip shortages that are preventing it from meeting customer demand, especially for iPhones and increasingly for Macs. Apple's website currently lists shipment times of one to two weeks for a new Neo.
Write to Rolfe Winkler at Rolfe.Winkler@wsj.com and Yang Jie at jie.yang@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 17, 2026 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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