Production orders placed by Apple for Apple Silicon MacBooks with its suppliers suggest that the company is expecting high demand for its first Intel-free models.

Initial orders are said to be equivalent to almost a full fifth of total MacBook sales last year …

Nikkei Asia carries the report.

Apple is asking suppliers to produce 2.5 million MacBook laptops powered by its in-house designed CPU by early 2021 as the California tech giant looks to rapidly cut its reliance on Intel chips, sources have told Nikkei Asia.

These initial production orders for the first MacBooks to use the Apple Silicon central processing unit are equivalent to nearly 20% of total MacBook shipments for 2019, which came in at 12.6 million units, sources briefed on the matter said.

The U.S. tech giant is slated to introduce other MacBook models using its own CPUs in the second quarter of next year, further replacing Intel’s microprocessors, the sources added […]

Like its latest iPhone processor chips, Apple’s latest CPUs for MacBooks are designed by the U.S. company but produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, and are made by TSMC’s most advanced 5-nanometer chip manufacturing technology, sources said.

We’re of course expecting to see Apple Silicon Macs as the main focus of next week’s One More Thing event. The purpose of the event would be pretty obvious anyway, but Apple has also given a couple of specific clues. An AR easter egg in the invitation shows what is clearly a MacBook lid opening, and the company has also flagged the event to developers, the first time it has done so for anything other than WWDC.

One of the main questions has been whether Apple would make the move into its own chips first in lower-end or higher-end Macs. In particular, whether the first Apple Silicon MacBooks would be Air or Pro models. Two reliable sources have suggested that the answer is: both.

The reliable leaker @L0vetodream tweeted shortly after Apple’s event announcement the vague message “13 inch X 2.” Paired with previous rumors, this seems to suggest that we should expect two of the first Apple Silicon Macs to be 13-inch MacBooks.

Most recently, reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that the first two Apple Silicon MacBooks would be a new version of the 13-inch MacBook Air alongside a new version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Although Apple is said to be planning to announce both models during the event, it’s possible that they will go on sale at different times.

Source: 9to5mac