30 Percent Growth Projected For Apple Notebook Shipments In 2Q15 Fuelled By New Macbook

Digitimes Research’s Joanne Chien reports that Apple ready to ship its new 12-inch MacBook on schedule April 10 and is reducing the inventory of previous-generation products expected to be cannibalized by the new laptop and upgraded MacBook Pros And mMacBook Airs. During the transition interval, Ms. Chien says a 25 drop in laptop shipments is anticipated for Apple — actually 25 percent greater than the PC laptop industry average Q1/15 pullback of 20 percent.

However, she predicts that in the 2015 second calendar quarter, Apple notebook shipments are expected to grow the most among top-tier laptop vendors by around 30 percent, far outstripping the industry’s estimated sequential shipments growth of 3 three percent in Q2/15.

Ms. Chien expects the base 256GB 12-inch MacBook, selling at the same $1,299 starting price as the 128GB 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, to account for 15-20 percent of Apple’s total 2015 laptop shipments in and to be the growth driver for the entire MacBook product line in the year, according to Digitimes Research’s intelligence sources in the upstream supply chain.

As for the competition, Ms. Chien reports that Wintel notebook vendors are expected to reduce shipments of 15.6-inch entry-level models ahead of the third quarter Windows 10 launch, and “likely to turn conservative” pushing out 14-inch entry-level notebook products selling for c. US$249 in order to avoid impacting Windows 10-based notebook shipments in the third quarter, and that the top-2 Wintel notebook vendors, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Lenovo, will have 5-10% sequential growth respectively Q2/15 due to dramatic inventory digestion in the first quarter.

(Photo Courtesy Apple)

MacBook USB Type-C Adoption To Expand New Technology’s Penetration

Meanwhile, Digitimes’ Ninelu Tu and Joseph Tsai report that Apple’s adoption of the USB Type-C port in the new 12-inch MacBook, abandoning he proprietary MagSafe technology will open the way for third-party connector makers to release more ISB C compatible peripherals and inspire other notebook and smartphone vendors to follow suit and equip their products with USB C technology.