Mac·News

Apple Doubles MacBook Neo Order to 10 Million Units

Apple has reportedly told its suppliers to double production of the MacBook Neo, raising its 2026 order from five million units to 10 million

Marcus Reed·May 29, 2026·4 min read

Apple has reportedly told its suppliers to double production of the MacBook Neo, raising its 2026 order from five million units to 10 million, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The move comes as the entry level laptop remains hard to buy nearly three months after launch. Delivery estimates continue to stretch into weeks, and many color and storage combinations are still back ordered.

Buying a MacBook Neo today is still an exercise in patience. The 13 inch, $599 laptop has proven hugely popular with students and mobile workers, and Apple has not been able to build them fast enough.

New Supplier - Sunny Optical Intelligence

A new supplier joins the effort

In a lengthy post on X, Kuo said Apple has brought on an additional vendor to help meet demand. He noted that "Sunny has become a new Apple CCM supplier, producing the MacBook Neo CCM."

A CCM, or Compact Camera Module, is a self contained camera unit ready to be dropped into a laptop like the MacBook Neo. Adding a supplier for the part is the kind of step a company takes when it is trying to clear a production bottleneck.

Alongside that detail, Kuo said Apple has raised its 2026 shipment forecast for the MacBook Neo from five million units to 10 million.

The report lines up with earlier reporting

The new figures match a separate report from earlier in May. Analyst Tim Culpan reported then that Apple had been forced to order additional A18 Pro chips and to double its planned production run to keep up with demand.

The MacBook Neo is powered by the A18 Pro, the same chip family that powered the iPhone 16 Pro. According to Culpan, Apple set aside A18 Pro chips that did not have the six functional GPU cores required for use in the iPhone, then used those five core versions in the MacBook Neo rather than scrapping them.

Culpan suggested that the supply of those salvaged chips may be running low, and that producing more laptops could prove costly. He said Apple may need to order fresh A18 Pro chips with six functional GPU cores and then disable one, leaving five active and preserving the $599 price.

A question mark over the $599 price

Rising memory costs add another wrinkle. With DRAM prices climbing, it likely costs more to build a MacBook Neo today than it did during the initial production run.

Culpan floated the possibility that Apple could drop the $599 starting price altogether and sell only the $699 512GB model going forward. It is the same approach Apple took with the Mac mini, where the entry level configuration was quietly removed from the lineup.

That outcome seems unlikely here. Apple is widely understood to view the $599 price as central to the MacBook Neo's success, and walking away from it would undercut the very thing driving demand. It is not yet clear how Apple intends to balance the added cost against that price point.

Background

The MacBook Neo first went on sale on March 11, 2026, and saw delivery estimates slip almost immediately. Those windows have not improved much since.

At $599, the MacBook Neo is Apple's current entry into the low end of the laptop market. The price falls to $499 in an education setting or with a military discount, which has helped fuel its popularity among students in particular.

Apple has not commented on its production plans, and it remains difficult to know exactly how many chips the company has on hand. What is clear is that demand for the MacBook Neo has outpaced Apple's expectations, and the company is moving to capitalize on it while interest stays high.

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