Apple will release its first MacBooks based on TSMC's 3nm fabrication process in 2024, not this year as some rumors have suggested. That's according to a new five-year global notebook shipments forecast published by DigiTimes.
Predicting an end to a two-year decline in the notebook market, the report forecasts a 4.7% shipment growth in 2024 driven by the easing of inflation and the introduction of new products, including new MacBooks powered by 3nm-based chips.
However, more recently in September, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that it seemed Apple will not launch new MacBook models with M3 series chips before the end of this year. Kuo only ruled out new MacBooks though, which appears to leave open the possibility of a new iMac coming this year. The current model featuring the M1 chip has now been on sale for over two and a half years.
The as-yet-unannounced M3 chip is widely expected to be fabricated with TSMC's 3nm process for performance and power efficiency improvements compared to the current 5nm-based M2 chip, which debuted in June 2022. It will also likely feature an all new GPU with hardware ray-tracing, first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip last month.
Source: Macrumors