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MacBook Airs will be half of Apple’s laptops in 2011 and the new version’s chips just went on sale


Image via iFixit

CNET reports on a note by analyst Doug Freedman, at Gleacher & Company, who reports that an estimated 48% of Apple’s laptops will be from MacBook Airs:

“How big is this opportunity? In the 4-year lifespan of [Apple’s] iconic MacBook Air, units sold as a percentage of its total notebook supply was 8 percent in 2008, 9 percent in 2009, and 17 percent in 2010 to an estimated 48 percent in 2011,” he wrote.

New Intel Sandy Bridge processors for ultraportable laptops (chips can overclock or “turbo” to higher speeds) were also priced today:

  • Core i7-2677M: 2 cores, 1.8 GHz (turbos to 2.9GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $317
  • Core i7-2637M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.8GHz), 4MB cache, 17 watts, $289
  • Core i5-2557M: 2 cores, 1.7GHz (turbos to 2.7GHz), 3MB cache, 17 watts, $250

Perhaps most importantly, these chips are based on Intel’s newish 32nm fab process that will take power efficiency to new heights.  On the downside, they will use Intel’s slower chipset which doesn’t benefit from Nvidia’s 3xx series graphics.

We’re expecting new MacBook Airs within a month.

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Comments

  1. […] the news jibes with most of what others have reported so far. CNET, for example, said that an estimated 48 percent of Apple’s laptops will be from MacBook Airs. Intel last week […]

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Avatar for Seth Weintraub Seth Weintraub

Publisher and Editorial Director of the 9to5/Electrek sites.


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