MacBook Neo drives notebook growth

Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is giving Apple a rare growth story in a notebook market that TrendForce says is shrinking in 2026. (trendforce.com) (apple.com) TrendForce said on March 5 that Apple’s notebook shipments could rise 7.7% in 2026, even as the broader notebook market contracts. The firm tied that forecast to the MacBook Neo launch and Apple’s move into lower price tiers. (trendforce.com) The MacBook Neo starts at $599, or $499 for education buyers, which puts Apple into the $500 to $800 band long dominated by Windows notebooks and Chromebooks. Apple says the machine uses an A18 Pro chip, has a 13-inch display, and offers up to 16 hours of battery life. (apple.com) (trendforce.com) TrendForce said the Neo alone could account for 4 million to 5 million units shipped in 2026. The same forecast said macOS notebook share could reach 13.2% this year. (trendforce.com) The firm did not say Apple had climbed to third place in the global notebook market. The available TrendForce note focuses on shipment growth, share gains, and pricing pressure, not a new vendor ranking for Apple. (trendforce.com) TrendForce’s explanation is less about “unified memory” marketing than about supply chains and pricing. It said Apple’s in-house silicon, standardized specifications, and tighter supplier control give it more room to hold prices down as memory and CPU costs rise. (trendforce.com) That backdrop got worse later in the month. On March 30, TrendForce cut its 2026 global notebook shipment forecast from a 9.2% decline to a 14.8% decline as demand weakened and supply-chain costs rose. (trendforce.com) Computerworld, citing Sigmaintell, reported this week that Apple may be the only laptop vendor to post growth in 2026. That lines up with TrendForce’s earlier view that Apple is gaining share while rivals pull back on inventory and product breadth. (computerworld.com) (trendforce.com) The cleaner version of the story is narrower than the social-media claim: MacBook Neo is a lower-cost Mac that analysts say could add millions of shipments for Apple in a year when the rest of the notebook market is getting smaller. (trendforce.com 1) (trendforce.com 2)