GoKawiilNearly three months after its debut, Apple’s MacBook Neo is emerging as an early success story, helping the Cupertino company reach new customers and challenging long-held assumptions about who buys a Mac.
Apple shipped 1.1 million MacBook Neo units in the quarter ended March, according to data from market intelligence provider IDC, shared with TechCrunch, ahead of the recent MacBook Air (M5) and MacBook Pro (M5) launches. Those MacBooks shipped over 900,000 and 550,000 units, respectively, in their debut quarters.
The figure is notable because the Neo was available for only about three weeks during the quarter after going on sale in mid-March, said Navkendar Singh, associate vice president at IDC, adding that shipments began to spike from early April.
Introduced in early March with a starting price of $599, roughly 45% below the entry-level MacBook Air, the MacBook Neo was designed to make the Mac more accessible to a broader set of buyers. The laptop retains much of the look and feel of Apple’s premium notebooks, including an aluminum chassis and a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, while making some compromises to reach the lower price point, including using an A18 Pro chip instead of an M-series processor and offering 8GB of memory in the base model.
So far, the market appears to be responding to Apple’s strategy. Demand for the Neo, Singh said, has exceeded expectations in several countries, including India, where retailers have struggled to secure enough inventory.
Of the MacBook Neo units shipped globally during the March quarter, 44% were shipped to the U.S., per IDC. India, meanwhile, accounted for close to 18,000 shipments despite the laptop being available for only a few weeks during the period.
The MacBook Neo starts at ₹69,900 (about $733) in India, compared with ₹119,900 (around $1,260) for the entry-level MacBook Air.
“Rising prices of Windows notebooks and attractive pricing of the Neo have led to its very high demand,” Singh told TechCrunch.
The Neo’s popularity could also reshape Apple’s strategy in markets such as India, where older MacBook models such as the M1, M2, and M3 Air have historically been important volume drivers when sold at discounted prices during sales events, according to IDC senior market analyst Bharath Shenoy.
“We need to see how that pans out going ahead due to Neo’s rising popularity,” Singh said.
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