The PC industry is in the midst of a sales slump and the latest report indicates the Mac may not be immune. While Apple seems to be doing better than its PC counterparts, it’s not immune to market demands. One of the things Apple did to alleviate the situation was to reduce production of its M2 chip, according to Korea-based The Elec. .
TSMC, the maker of Apple’s chips, did not send any M2 wafers to “packaging and testing companies to be cut and assembled as finished chips”, and The Elec concludes that this is due to weak demand for MacBooks in the first months of 2023. The publication claims that production resumed in March but at “half of the previous year”.
Apple’s decision had a ripple effect on the industry. South Korean packaging companies with dedicated Apple production lines had virtually no work for their employees. And companies in Taiwan, Germany, Japan and South Korea that supply production materials have also been affected. Apple resumed production of M2 in March but cut its volume in half.
The MacBook Air M2 and 13-inch MacBook Pro arrived last July and Apple released a new MacBook Pro and Mac mini with M2 Pro and M2 Max processors in late January and neither seems to be missing. Apple has several new Macs in the works, including a 15-inch MacBook Air and the first silicon Apple Mac Pro, which will likely use the M2 chip. And rumors suggest the M3 chip will arrive in late 2023 or 2024.
While Apple was the only PC company to see sales growth in 2022, Apple saw a quarterly decline in revenue for the first quarter of 2023. Apple CEO Tim Cook cited “headwinds change”, pandemic-related factors and the “challenging macroeconomic environment”. as reasons for the slowdown in sales. Apple CFO Luca Maestri did not provide guidance on expected revenue for the second quarter of 2023, but said the company expects results similar to the first quarter, where the company reported revenue of $117.2 billion. However, based on The Elec’s report, it looks like the Mac portion of the quarter could experience a downturn.
