The PC industry is in the middle of a sales slump, and the latest report indicates that 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 mitigate the situation was to halt production of the M2 chip, according to Korea-based The Elec. .
TSMC, the manufacturer of Apple’s chips, has not shipped M2 wafers to “packaging and testing companies to be cut and assembled as finished chips,” and The Elec concludes that is due to low demand for MacBooks in the early months of 2023 The publication claims production resumed in March, but at “half the level of the previous year”.
Apple’s decision had a chain effect on the industry. South Korean packaging companies with dedicated production lines for Apple essentially had no work for their employees. And companies in Taiwan, Germany, Japan and South Korea that supply the materials for production were also affected. Apple picked up M2 production in March, but cut volume to half.
The M2 MacBook Air 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 at the end of January and there doesn’t seem to be a shortage. Apple has several new Macs in the pipeline, including a 15-inch MacBook Air and the first Apple silicon Mac Pro, which will likely use the M2 chip. And rumors suggest that the M3 chip will arrive in late 2023 or 2024.
While Apple was the only PC company with revenue growth in 2022, Apple experienced a quarterly revenue decline for the first quarter of 2023. Apple CEO Tim Cook cited “foreign exchange headwinds,” pandemic factors, and “the challenging macroeconomic environment.” as reasons for the slowdown in sales. Apple CFO Luca Maestri gave no guidance on expected revenue for Q2 2023, but said the company expects similar results to Q1, where the company reported $117.2 billion in revenue. However, based on The Elec’s report, it looks like the Mac portion of the quarter could see a quarter of decline.
