Tianfeng International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated on Friday (26th) that the next-generation MacBook Pro and iPad Pro will use TSMC’s 5-nanometer chips, and will not be upgraded to 3-nanometer chips until 2023.
Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted: “EMS (Electronic Foundries) must start purchasing components for mass production products in the fourth quarter of this year from October at the latest, but 3nm chips must have until January 2023, so I think in The new MacBook Pros and iPad Pros in volume production in the fourth quarter of this year will feature new, but probably not 3nm, processors.”
He mentioned: “The production time of TSMC’s 3nm chips is about 4 months, so even if TSMC announced that it will start mass production of 3nm in September, it will have to wait until January 2023 at the earliest. This is why TSMC 3nm products are expected to start contributing to revenue in the first half of 2023.”
According to industry reports, the new iPad Pro equipped with the M2 chip is expected to debut at Apple’s second fall conference in October, but the release time of the new MacBook Pro equipped with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips is not yet clear. Given the continued disruption to the supply chain, A delay to 2023 cannot be ruled out.
Future Macs and iPads, as well as the A17 Bionic chip in next year’s iPhone 15 Pro, are also expected to feature 3nm chips.
apple (AAPL-US) closed down 3.77% on Friday at $163.62 a share, with TSMC ADR (TSM-US) fell 3.23 percent to $84.74 a share.