Monday, April 3rd 2023

Apple Reportedly Halted M2 Chip Production as Mac Shipments Tanked

Reports from supply chain partners suggests that Apple cut off production of their current generation M2 SoC lineup in the months of January and February following significantly decreased demand for Mac computers containing the chips. The details trace back to partners in Outsourced Semiconductor Package Test, or OSAT, which is many different companies in the supply chain that contribute to assembly and testing of the final packaged SoC. OSAT partners claim they received zero M2 wafers from TSMC during both months, and that shipments have only resumed at half of the previous capacity in the month of March. The breadth of this shutdown touched many different suppliers, from the packaging facilities in Korea, to the solder ball suppliers in Taiwan, the TIM suppliers in Germany, and die underfill material suppliers from Japan. Many of these parts can be specific to the type of chip being produced, as M2 features a different packaging method to Apple's normal A-Series mobile SoCs; a lack of M2 silicon led to a full shutdown of this supply chain. An industry insider for Amcona states, "It is impossible to do other packaging work on the M2 line, the so-called 'Apple line' installed in Amcona chip packs."

In their Q1 2023 earnings conference Apple reported a sharp revenue drop in Mac sales from $10.85B down to $7.74B. "The PC market is facing a very challenging situation," stated Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, "I think we have an advantage with silicon but it will be very difficult in the short term." Apple began production of M2 well over a year ago when demand for Apple silicon equipped MacBooks was still sky high, and likely had large reserves of finished chips and machines stockpiled for the launch of M2 Pro and M2 Max in January. With demand dipping up to the launch of the new MacBook models it would certainly justify slowing down production, but outright halting it for multiple months suggests demand far undershot Apple's expectation.
Sources: TheElec, 9to5Mac
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35 Comments on Apple Reportedly Halted M2 Chip Production as Mac Shipments Tanked

#26
bug
@TheinsanegamerN Truth be told, there were those who pointed out M1's (and later M2's) amazing efficiency comes at the cost of a high transistor count and big die (about the same as Alder Lake for desktop, but good luck digging up the numbers for Apple). The high prices would be a side effect of big, expensive dies.
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#27
TheinsanegamerN
bug@TheinsanegamerN Truth be told, there were those who pointed out M1's (and later M2's) amazing efficiency comes at the cost of a high transistor count and big die (about the same as Alder Lake for desktop, but good luck digging up the numbers for Apple). The high prices would be a side effect of big, expensive dies.
It doesnt justify the $200 price to go to 16GB of RAM, or the $400 for 24GB. Or the $800 price to go from 256GB of storage to 2tb.

Or, to go from the M2 to the M2 pro, discounting the memory and storage cost, apple is charging you an additional $600. That is absolutely ludicrous.
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#28
bug
TheinsanegamerNIt doesnt justify the $200 price to go to 16GB of RAM, or the $400 for 24GB. Or the $800 price to go from 256GB of storage to 2tb.

Or, to go from the M2 to the M2 pro, discounting the memory and storage cost, apple is charging you an additional $600. That is absolutely ludicrous.
Tbh, we were always charged premiums for extra RAM or SSD space. But yes, if feels like Apple is, once again, taking this to the next level.
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#29
Darmok N Jalad
No doubt the base config is not for everyone. I had the base M1 mini and it did what I needed it to do (photo editing and RAW processing), but $100 price reduction is still a price reduction, and prices aren’t exactly going down on everything. I would have rather seen Apple keep the same price but bump to a 16/512 base, but then they would no doubt suffer in the upsell department where the margins are really sweet. I do think Apple has overdone it on product differentiation. Jobs liked a simple lineup, but Tim sure lets the company run wild with SKUs. Sadly, the design of Apple’s M-line makes memory upgrades impossible, and it’s a big negative to pros. Just look at the 2014 mini, which has a 4GB config and was only 2C/4T. It’s practically a worthless device now. I guess you could use it as a file server since the HDD can still be replaced. The 8/256 models will maybe hold up a bit better, but it’s still a problem long term.

The 2009-2012 Mac Pro was the peak of Apple design and engineering, IMO. It’s still a quite flexible piece of kit, and it’s thoughtful down to the CPU HSF assembly also cooling the VRMs.
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#30
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
DrCRAs someone who once had an AMD64 MBP, I’m not sure why I’d buy their current products unless I wanted some flavour of a really nice netbook for some reason.
I really don't understand what you mean. Their current ARM stuff is very different from their x86 stuff.
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#31
cvaldes
I don't understand either.

Apple has never used AMD CPUs in their computers to my knowledge. They have used Radeon discrete GPUs in some Macs (and some Nvidia GPUs a long time ago) but all of the x86 models have used Intel CPUs not AMD64.
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#32
R0H1T
Darmok N JaladI do think Apple has overdone it on product differentiation. Jobs liked a simple lineup, but Tim sure lets the company run wild with SKUs.
It's not a Tim Apple thing, Apple has always been greedy af even back in the 90's IIRC ~ this BS upsell they charge though is mostly down to their dumb unadulterated fan base! They could easily force Apple to make the upgrades saner wrt price, but no f*** that they'd rather buy the latest shiny iToy even if it gives 10% more performance/efficiency for 100% more $$$ :nutkick:
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#33
R-T-B
R0H1TMore like just the minds of sheep :laugh:
Sheep aren't buying apple products. Leave them alone, they are nice animals.
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#34
Darmok N Jalad
I don’t really understand the hostility toward Apple customers. Just because you don’t see the value in something doesn’t mean someone else has the same opinion. Before you fire back, I equally don’t understand Apple users that recite outdated Windows tropes or spell MS with a dollar sign. Go over to MacRumors and read the top comments on Apple News stories. You aren’t going to find many that blindly support All Things Apple. No, they are often the first to call them out on dumb moves, money grabs, and bad products.
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#35
bug
Darmok N JaladI don’t really understand the hostility toward Apple customers. Just because you don’t see the value in something doesn’t mean someone else has the same opinion. Before you fire back, I equally don’t understand Apple users that recite outdated Windows tropes or spell MS with a dollar sign. Go over to MacRumors and read the top comments on Apple News stories. You aren’t going to find many that blindly support All Things Apple. No, they are often the first to call them out on dumb moves, money grabs, and bad products.
And then there's this:

Also, remember when people were camping out in front of Apple stores to get the new iPhone, despite the fact that it was available online anyway?

I'm with you that Apple's products have their target market. I just don't like Apple's business proposition (let us lock things down as hard as we can, and then we'll tell you what's a fair price - for device and repairs).
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