Apple will release its first MacBook based on TSMC's 3nm manufacturing process in 2024, not this year as some rumors have suggested. That's according to new five-year global laptop shipment forecasts released by DigiTimes.
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The report predicts that the laptop market will end two years of decline and expects shipments to grow 4.7% in 2024, driven by easing inflation and new product launches, including new MacBooks equipped with 3nm chips. The original text of the report is as follows:
The share of laptops built with Arm-based processors is likely to decline rather than increase by 2023, as Apple uses in-house designed Arm-based CPUs in most of its laptop lineup and shipments are expected to drop significantly in 2023. The American brand plans to switch to CPUs built on TSMC's 3nm node for performance upgrades in 2024.
In July, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the first Mac equipped with an M3 chip may be released in October this year. Given that Apple launched new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in January, and more recently new 15-inch MacBook Air, MacStudio, and MacPro models in June, Gurman said that the first beneficiaries of the new M3 chip may be the next-generation "iMac," 13-inch "MacBook Air," and 13-inch "MacBook Pro."
However, as recently as September, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple does not appear to be launching new MacBook models equipped with M3 series chips before the end of this year. However, Ming-Chi Kuo only ruled out the possibility of a new MacBook, which seems to leave the possibility of launching a new iMac this year, because the current model equipped with the M1 chip has been on sale for more than two and a half years.
DigiTimes recently hinted that Apple would release the MacBook Pro before the holiday season. The Taiwanese media claimed earlier this month that Apple is preparing to launch new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with more energy-efficient mini-LED displays before the end of this year. The report makes no mention of the processors these models will be based on, but Gurman has previously said that the next versions of both machines will feature M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, and that they will "likely" launch in mid-2024.
It is widely expected that the yet-to-be-announced M3 chip will be manufactured using TSMC's 3nm process, which will improve performance and energy efficiency compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip launched in June 2022. It may also feature a new GPU, hardware ray tracing, first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip last month.