Apple has ordered 2.5 million MacBooks powered by its own chips by early 2021, indicating the company is projecting strong demand for the first Macs powered by its own chips.
According to a new report from Nikkei, TSMC will manufacture the Apple Silicon chips for the new MacBooks using a five-nanometer fabrication process. This means that the upcoming product could also have the A14 chips from the iPhone 12 and iPad Air.
“Apple is asking suppliers to produce 2.5 million MacBook laptops powered by its in-house designed CPU by early 2021 as the California technology giant looks to rapidly cut its reliance on Intel chips,” reads the report.
To put that in context, the initial production orders for the first Apple Silicon-powered MacBooks are equivalent to nearly one-fifth of total MacBook shipments for 2019, which came in at 12.6 million units. At WWDC 2020 this summer, Apple announced that it’s ditching Intel as the CPU supplier for Mac computers in favor of its own Apple Silicon.
Apple is expected to unveil its first new ARM-based Macs at next week’s One More Thing event. While we’re sure new Macs will be the focus of the event, we don’t know which models will be unveiled as the first Apple Silicon Macs.
Fairly reliable leaker @L0vetodream has tweeted a vague message “13 inch X 2,” suggesting we’ll see two 13-inch MacBook models as the first Apple Silicon Macs.
Recently, well-connected Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the first two ARM-based Macs would be new versions of the 13-inch MacBook Air and a new 13-inch MacBook Pro.
