Apple To Launch New MacBook Air in June-July Says Digitimes
According to Taiwanese IT industry watching site Digitimes’s Yen-Shyang Hwang, Yenting Chen, and Adam Hwang, the Taiwan-based supply chain for Apple products will begin shipping refreshed 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch MacBook Air models featuring Sandy Bridge Core “i” CPU silicon and supporting the Thunderbolt I/O interface in late May for launch in June or July, according to industry sources.
As with most Apple professional laptops since the second-generation WallStreet PowerBook in 1998, the Revision B MacBook Air Gen-2 will assembled by Taiwan’s Quanta industries form components made by the usual OEM suppliers, and with the Air’s still-fresh design, no form-factor changes are expected other than the MiniDisplay port being upgraded to Thunderbolt support.
Digitimes notes that Apple shipped over 2.7 million notebook PCs in the first quarter of 2011, historically the second highest quarterly level and only 5% lower than the shipment volume in the preceding quarter, although the 5% drop was lower than the corresponding industry average decrease of more than 10%, thanks mainly to robust sales of recently-refreshed MacBook Pro models, and with shipments of the new MacBook Air, analysts Apple’s notebook PC shipment volume in the second quarter is expected to rise by 5-10% on quarter and may attain 3.0 million units.
If you’re planning a MacBook Air purchase in the near future, it will probably be a good idea to be patient for a few more weeks. While the current MacBook Air is a fine machine and highly desirable, based on recent history with the MacBook Pro, the Sandy Bridge Air will blow its Core 2 Duo predecessors into the weeds performance-wise.
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