Apple to Release More Affordable 13-Inch MacBook Air Soon: KGI

Apple is reportedly planning to launch a more affordable variant of the 13-inch MacBook Air in the second quarter of 2018.

Apple is likely to release a new MacBook Air "with a lower price tag" during the second quarter of 2018, meaning we should see it sooner rather than later, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities was quoted as saying by 9 to 5 mac on Saturday.

The analyst expects the more affordable MacBook Air will help push MacBook shipments up by 10-15 percent this year.

MacBook Air, launched by then Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in 2008, has not been updated since 2015 as Apple has shifted focus towards the 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro.

The 13-inch MacBook Air, a popular choice for college students, is currently sold starting at $999 (roughly Rs. 65,000) for 128GB of PCIe-based storage, a 1.8GHz dual-core i5 processor, and 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM. It is priced at Rs. 77,200 in India, though usually at much lower prices in the open market.

The device last saw a minor update at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2017, with a slightly faster processor, and 8GB of RAM as a default.

Kuo says that KGI is "positive" on shipments of AirPods and predicts the refreshed model will come in the second half of the year, driving strong year over year growth.

Further, Kuo predicts an entry-level 6.1-inch model of the iPhone to launch this year.

Kuo also notes that demand for HomePod has been "mediocre" thus far. Overall, demand for the smart speaker based on "shipping time" is "neutral", the report said.

Comments

Is Nokia 5.1 Plus Better Than Zenfone Max Pro M1, Redmi 6 Pro, Realme 1?

The Nokia 5.1 Plus is the topic of discussion on this week's episode of Orbital. This is Nokia's first budget Android One smartphone and it's priced under Rs. 11,000. Nokia 5.1 Plus price in India is the biggest reason for us to dedicate an episode to it. The smartphone has a lot of interesting features that competitors lack and that makes us want to discuss it at length. We've almost completed testing the smartphone and that put us in a good place to talk about it. Reviewers Aditya Shenoy and Roydon Cerejo join host Pranay Parab to discuss this phone. We begin this episode by mentioning what makes the Nokia 5.1 Plus worth checking out. It has a powerful processor at a really low price but is there more to it than just excellent marketing? Roydon talks about that, before moving on to mention the build quality and one major quirky aspect of the Nokia 5.1 Plus' design. Then we talk about the specifications and the battery life of the Nokia 5.1 Plus. This is w...

WhatsApp's chief business officer Neeraj Arora quits

Neerja Arora , WhatsApp ’s chief business officer, is the latest Facebook executive to step down the facebook cluster of companies in the last few months. In a Facebook post , Arora said he is “going to be taking some time off to recharge and spend time with family,” and thanked WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Koum stepped down as WhatsApp CEO earlier this year over disagreements with Facebook executives over privacy and encryption. Acton had left WhatsApp a year ago, in September 2017, to start his own non-profit. However, a few months later, he urged people to #deletefacebook on his Twitter account. The co-founders’ departure reportedly boiled down to disagreements over the monetization options for WhatsApp which has been anti-ads since the beginning. It is time. #deletefacebook — Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018 Arora had been with WhatsApp since 2011, when the company was just two years old. He was with the...

Musk's new pay deal could make him the world's richest man—if Tesla succeeds

It is the Elon Musk of corporate pay deals, a cocksure, all-or-nothing moonshot into history. Little wonder, then, that it is for none other than Elon Musk. Tesla Inc. granted the billionaire founder a $2.6 billion award, the largest-ever of its kind, underscoring the company's outsize ambitions and how intimately connected its future success is to Musk. If fully vested over a decade, stock options would net him as much as $55.8 billion. Along the way, nothing would be guaranteed -- zero salary or cash bonuses. The audacious award outlines a plan for Tesla to become one of the world's biggest companies, which would make Musk perhaps the richest man on the planet in the process, but without as detailed a road map to get there as was provided with his last award. This, too, is very Musk-like -- set big-picture, moonshot end goals, particulars be damned. "It's breathtaking both in size and in terms of performance required to earn it," Steven Hall...

Vc Tech

Search This Blog