Rumor: MacBook Pro won’t see any major updates this year

Apple has no plans to make any “major upgrades” to its MacBook Pro lineup in 2018, though the company expects to sell lots of laptops, according to DigiTimes. 

Quoting unnamed “upstream supply chain” sources, the article says the tech giant will shift a major portion of its Mac laptop orders to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) instead of giving most of the orders to Quanta Computer, as usual.

Despite the fact that Foxconn will see a major increase in MacBook orders in 2018, Quanta is expected to remain the largest MacBook supplier to Apple in the year. Digitimes Research says its figures show that the upstream supply chain has shipped around 15 million MacBooks a year to Apple with the shipment ratio for Quanta and Foxconn at around 8:2 for the past five years. In 2017, Quanta had a 79.5% share and Foxconn 20.5%.

Chances the rumor is true, according to the Sellers Research Group (that’s me): 70%. I don’t expect any major design changes to the MacBook Pro, but there will be serious upgrades in the specs — including the ability to have 32GB of RAM. I do expect some design changes in the 12-inch MacBook, including the addition of the Touch Bar. If this doesn’t happen, it’s not a good sign for the future of the Touch Bar tech.