When Apple shows the first Macs with in-house processors on Tuesday, it will probably not be too much time before they go on sale. At least according to the statement made in June, Apple plans to launch the first ARM Mac by the end of the year, but other assessments also consider a market launch at the end of November to be conceivable. The business magazine Nikkei has now provided estimates of the quantities Apple is preparing for, citing suppliers. Apple wants to have 2.5 million notebooks with ARM chips manufactured by February 2021 – in order to convert other series as quickly as possible.
To put the numbers in relation: In a normal fiscal quarter, Apple typically sells between four and five million Macs. The fact that it was significantly more this year is attributed more to the changes in everyday work than to a generally higher level of interest. The report speaks of “MacBooks” in general, but it refers to all notebook series. It is mentioned that Apple sold 12.6 million MacBooks in 2019. It remains to be seen how general demand will develop. The extremely high interest in the new Macs, which prevails on technology-related news platforms, does not necessarily have to reflect general customer behavior – unless Apple actually surprises with sensational performance / efficiency data.
TSMC becomes Apple’s most important partner
For Apple’s chip manufacturer TSMC, the planned changes mean full order books. Of course, Apple needs a lot more iPhone chips than Mac chips, but the Mac division can be seen as a new major customer for TSCM. At the same time, Apple could at some point pose problems – should TSMC ever face manufacturing problems similar to those that Intel had to deal with in the past two to three years, this would have immense effects on Apple’s entire product portfolio.