Apple M3 MacBooks won’t release this year according to forecasts

If you were hoping to see updated Apple M3 silicon in laptops this year, you might be disappointed, as a new report claims that the first devices will begin shipping in 2024.

The Apple rumor mill is in full swing, with the latest development being that we might see MacBook Pro updates, without M3 silicon inside them. A new report from Digitimes further forecasts that we should not expect new Apple M3 chips until 2024.

The report states the following: “In 2023, the share of notebooks built using Arm-based processors will likely decrease rather than increase because Apple, which adopts in-house designed Arm-based CPUs for most of its notebook lineups, is expected to experience a significant decline in shipments in 2023 as the US brand vendor plans to transit to CPUs built by a 3nm node at TSMC for performance upgrading in 2024.“

This backs up claims that Apple will release a refreshed M2 MacBook Pro 14 and 16 with new screens, but with no silicon upgrade in sight for 2023.

Could TSMC yields be an issue?

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At the heart of the cause for no M3 chip in mainstream laptops this year could be the fact that manufacturing the advanced 3nm TSMC node could be trouble for tech’s busiest foundry. Earlier this month, it was reported by Korean media that TSMC and Samsung’s yield on 3nm chips was lower than usual. The report claims that Samsung’s yields, in particular, are around 50% and that TSMC is struggling with similar issues.

In general, in order for chips to be attractive to customers like Apple, yields must be at around 70%. With the difficulty of actually creating a working chip now in question, it could be one of the core contributors to why Apple might not debut the M3 chip in 2023 for its most popular products.

We will just have to wait and see what the Cupertino company claims, and what it has in store for the rest of the year.