Apple doubling orders for 'hot-selling' Macbook models, suppliers say
Apple's Asian manufacturing partners have seen orders for popular Macbook models as much as double, while shipments of notebooks to other brand-name vendors have failed to meet expectations, a new report claims.
According to Taiwan industry publication DigiTimes, sources from "Taiwan's notebook upstream supply chain" report that Apple and Samsung are the only two brands to see continued strong first quarter 2011 notebook demand, even as shipments to other vendors have dropped below expectations.
Though overall notebook shipments are expected to contract by as much as 10 percent sequentially in the first quarter of the year, Apple appears poised to gain market share as it increases orders for best-selling offerings from its notebook lineup. The MacBook maker is reportedly "revising upward its orders with the volume of some hot-selling models being doubled," the report noted.
The report fails to mention which MacBook models are particularly "hot-selling," but holiday reports of MacBook Air sales suggested the diminutive laptop was "flying off the shelves."
Notebook makers could also see slowdown as a result of a delay caused by a defect in Intel's Sandy Bridge chips. According to the report, HP may ship 10 million notebooks in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 11.13 million shipped last quarter because of the delay from Intel.
Intel revealed the defect late last month and pledged to replace affected chipsets. The corrected version of the chipset is expected to begin shipping in late February, though Intel will likely not recover to "full volume" production capacity until April.
The world's largest chipmaker has since resumed shipment of chipsets bound for systems unaffected by the issue, but it is unclear to what extent Apple's next-generation MacBook lineup will be affected by the delays.
The report claims that Acer is also expected to see notebook shipments decline year-over-year, although the company will see modest growth this quarter after posting the lowest notebook shipment numbers in six quarters in the fourth quarter of 2010.
In the fourth quarter of calendar 2010, Apple sold a record 4.13 million Macs. Sales of portables made up the bulk of the revenue, bringing in $3.7 billion on sales of 2.9 million. According to the Mac maker, strong sales of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro helped the company's sales reach nearly 8 times the IDC world average estimate.
According to Taiwan industry publication DigiTimes, sources from "Taiwan's notebook upstream supply chain" report that Apple and Samsung are the only two brands to see continued strong first quarter 2011 notebook demand, even as shipments to other vendors have dropped below expectations.
Though overall notebook shipments are expected to contract by as much as 10 percent sequentially in the first quarter of the year, Apple appears poised to gain market share as it increases orders for best-selling offerings from its notebook lineup. The MacBook maker is reportedly "revising upward its orders with the volume of some hot-selling models being doubled," the report noted.
The report fails to mention which MacBook models are particularly "hot-selling," but holiday reports of MacBook Air sales suggested the diminutive laptop was "flying off the shelves."
Notebook makers could also see slowdown as a result of a delay caused by a defect in Intel's Sandy Bridge chips. According to the report, HP may ship 10 million notebooks in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 11.13 million shipped last quarter because of the delay from Intel.
Intel revealed the defect late last month and pledged to replace affected chipsets. The corrected version of the chipset is expected to begin shipping in late February, though Intel will likely not recover to "full volume" production capacity until April.
The world's largest chipmaker has since resumed shipment of chipsets bound for systems unaffected by the issue, but it is unclear to what extent Apple's next-generation MacBook lineup will be affected by the delays.
The report claims that Acer is also expected to see notebook shipments decline year-over-year, although the company will see modest growth this quarter after posting the lowest notebook shipment numbers in six quarters in the fourth quarter of 2010.
In the fourth quarter of calendar 2010, Apple sold a record 4.13 million Macs. Sales of portables made up the bulk of the revenue, bringing in $3.7 billion on sales of 2.9 million. According to the Mac maker, strong sales of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro helped the company's sales reach nearly 8 times the IDC world average estimate.
Comments
I am not surprised the Air is so successful, it is not only it's size and beauty but amazing they can make it so cheaply. But then again the CPU is two generations behind.
AND FFS PLEASE PUT IN A 512MB GPU *STANDARD*
MacBook Pro 15" with Air styling! Bring ittt
AND FFS PLEASE PUT IN A 512MB GPU *STANDARD*
+1
When will Apple put Pro graphics in their Pro laptops. Then go get ATI/nVidia to write the graphics drivers please.
It must be the Air obviously, it wouldn't suddenly start happening for models that have been out nearly a year.
AIR certainly helps but you really need to digest Apples quarterly reports over the last few quarters. If yo do that you will see that Apple laptop sales have been ramping up for many quarters now. The trend has been inplace well before the AIRs came out.
I'm not saying AIR isn't helping here just that Apples Mac hardware in general has been going in the opposite direction of the PC industry for at least two years now.
If the new Pros will inherit Air features this bodes well for the coming year.
It certainly does. It will be even better if more pro class tech is incorporated such as LightPeak or very high res displays. I would not be surprised to see a 15" AIR sitting on the shelf right next to a 15" MBP.
I am not surprised the Air is so successful, it is not only it's size and beauty but amazing they can make it so cheaply. But then again the CPU is two generations behind.
See now you fall off the wagon going on about nothing. The new AIRs are successful because they take a good idea and fix it to meet peoples expectations. The old AIR was a perfect example of design over function. The new AIRs are just the opposite, design was secondary to meeting user expectations.
As to the price don't sweat it they are making plenty on this machine. Oh and please don't knock the CPU, it isn't that old and Intel really has nothing to compete with it. There is a hell of a lot more to engineering a balanced system than just putting the latest Intel chip into a platform. The problem is pretty clear Intels integrated graphics suck pretty badly with current state of the art. So the current AIRs simply incorporate the hardware Apple can buy into the chassis.
+1
When will Apple put Pro graphics in their Pro laptops. Then go get ATI/nVidia to write the graphics drivers please.
In 2 or 3 years you will be buying top of the line models to get discrete GPUs in a laptop if you can get them at all. By that time the on die GPUs will be leveraging the close integration with the CPU to make going off chip a big negative.
It might take more than 3 years but once the GPU becomes an equal to the CPU, that is they can access memory just like any CPU core and can better handle threading, discrete CPUs will look backwards for many uses/users. When these upgraded "Fusion" chips arrive, things like OpenCL will take on a new significance.
In any event the days of the discrete GPU are numbered in the context of Laptops.
Lately, iPhone/iPad/iTouch application tool adds more attraction. Apple hasn't relented on this front.
It must be the Air obviously, it wouldn't suddenly start happening for models that have been out nearly a year. If the new Pros will inherit Air features this bodes well for the coming year.
I am not surprised the Air is so successful, it is not only it's size and beauty but amazing they can make it so cheaply. But then again the CPU is two generations behind.
Further evidence that specs are not 'necessarily' as important as the overall performance and user experience.
People r buying the MBP's as desktop relacements... Wait till they figure out the MBA's can do that and be more portable too!
People r buying the MBP's as desktop relacements... Wait till they figure out the MBA's can do that and be more portable too!
Not for true pro users (software developers, video/audio/graphics professionals, etc).
They need as much power as they can get (CPU cores, memory speed, hard drive speed, etc) and so a MBA style laptop which skimps on specs in favour of size isn't going to cut it. That's what the "Pro" means in MBP -- using it for much more than just email and surfing the web.
Now, the non-Pro MacBook line and the MBA line combining -- that I can see.
See now you fall off the wagon going on about nothing.
Oh wait, what's this new article on AI about Apple upgrading the Air to Sandy Bridge?