Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has in the past accurately predicted Apple’s Mac product roadmap, published a report today saying that Apple may be getting ready to drop its 17-inch MacBook Pro from its lineup. The reason? Weak sales.
Kuo’s prediction comes as Apple is expected to introduce new notebooks that serve as a hybrid between the current MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, offering greater power than the Air but greater portability than the Pro. Kuo believes that Apple will elect to drop the 17-inch size as part of this revamp in order to streamline the company’s product offerings.
Kuo’s report reads: “Apple’s Mac business in 2Q12 will be boosted by several factors. Three of which are: (1) Mountain Lion, which integrates iOS features with Mac OS, Apple TV’s interaction function, will be launched in June; (2) upgrading to Ivy Bridge; and (3) back-to-school demand. We forecast Apple will sell 5.32mn units of the Mac series (up 28.5% QoQ and 35.2% YoY) in 2Q12, making it the main growth driver.
“While adding new products, Apple is likely to stop making the 17” MacBook Pro this year due to falling shipments, in order to maintain a lean product line strategy.”
Kuo estimates that Apple sold roughly 3.1 million notebooks in the first calendar quarter of 2012. Nearly half of those were the 13-inch MacBook Pro. He sees sales of roughly 500,000 15-inch models, and only 50,000 17-inch models. Kuo also estimates first quarter MacBook Air sales comes in at around 1.1 million, split almost evenly between 11-inch and 13-inch models.
Further, he says that MacBook Air sales are only meeting Apple’s expectations, but not exceeding them, partly because solid-state drives are not yet available in large enough capacities to satisfy storage-hungry users. He says the trend of omitting optical and traditional hard drives from notebook will continue however, with solid-state drives become more cost competitive over time.
