New MacBook Air series to arrive in Q2, 2022

The second quarter of 2023 will see the debut of a new MacBook Air series from Apple, according to the Taiwanese supply chain publication DigiTimes.

Apple expected to release the 2023 MacBook Air in early April

According to a paywalled preview of a DigiTimes report, “The first quarter of 2023 is expected to see Apple’s MacBook shipping low, but the second quarter will see the release of a new MacBook Air series, according to industry sources.”

The second quarter, which covers April through June, also includes Apple’s yearly WWDC developer conference. At WWDC last year, the latest 13-inch MacBook Air with the M2 chip was unveiled, and it went on sale in July.

The DigiTime’s report comes a day after display analyst Ross Young revealed that panel production for Apple’s rumored 15.5-inch MacBook Air had begun this month, indicating an “early April launch.”

We do not yet have any additional information regarding the 15-inch MacBook Air. We can assume that it will essentially be a larger version of the 13-inch MacBook Air. Accordingly, the tech giant will offer the laptop in 13.6-inch or 15.5-inch size variants. This can be corroborated by today’s DigiTimes report which specifies that Apple will be releasing a new MacBook Air series rather than a singular model.

It is unknown whether the 15-inch MacBook Air will use the current-generation M2 chip or the next, 3nm-based M3 chip. Although TSMC, Apple’s chip manufacturing partner, started mass producing 3nm chips in December, it’s not certain if the M3 chip will be available by the second quarter. As the high-end M2 Ultra chip for the new Mac Pro is the series’ penultimate chip, Apple still needs to unveil it, and it probably wants to do so before revealing the M3 chip.

In contrast to Young and DigiTimes, Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said that the rumored 15.5-inch MacBook will go into mass production in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Apple expected to release the 2023 MacBook Air in early April

Asma Hussain