ARMacs prices?

[leman]

intel charges $300-$500 (volume price) for CPUs that Apple uses. The iPad Pro — with a faster CPU and GPU — is sold for $799, and that includes everything else. I suppose you can imagine how much money Apple would be saving per unit. I suppose they will be able to increase their margins while simultaneously dropping the price by $200 or so...

 

[Azrael9]

I expect all first gen ARM macs to be at least 25% cheaper than equivalent intel macs. It is crucial the transition goes quickly. Second gen ARM macs will come at a premium because of "features"...

I think you've brought up a good point, there.

Pricing to not only help the transition but to get that Mac ARM installed base to incentivise developers to join the Mac ARM train.

Expensive. Affordable. or Cheap.

The one in the middle makes sense.

25% off would restore them to their former prices of affordability from years gone by.

You know...

...when you could get an iMac at £595, £695, £799, £999 etc.

Or Towers in the £1300-£2k range.

Or a Mac Mini at £499.

There's a chance to get real marketshare from Windows here.

And take the 5million in sales per quarter up to 6, 7 right upto 10 million a quarter. There's alot of people who just can't afford Macs as they are currently priced.

A price drop of the 4k iMac £1250 uk. To about £999. Would be a start for the 24 inch iMac ARM.

Azrael.

 

[ssgbryan]

Intel CPUs are very expensive. I think they can lower the price a bit and still increase their profit margin a lot. And thanks to that, they will also sell more.

The cost of the A13 is estimated to be around $64 . There is no way they are getting the newest Intel CPUs even close to that price. They can even put it in an iPhone SE2 for $399 and still make good money.

Nozuka, OEMs don't pay anywhere near the price listed on the ARK. 10th Gen Intel CPUs start at under $100

 

[Falhófnir]

If the entry level Macs (eg MBA) can just share the vanilla A14X with the iPad, I think that will translate into relatively significant savings, they don't list the retail price of the i3-1000NG4 but going by other chips probably around $280 (Probably a bit less for Apple) whereas the cost of an A series is meant to be in the $40-60 range all in (incl R&D etc; maybe a bit more for the AX chips, I couldn't find a source there).

That's probably enough to revive the 12" MacBook, but as a direct replacement for the 11" MacBook Air at its price of $899 if the lower power consumption means they can also ditch the expensive terraced battery for cheaper standard shaped cells. So the cheapest MacBook does get a bit cheaper, but its not a direct price cut to the 13" Air (maybe other specs get a bit more generous again instead?).

For completely custom Mac chips, the greater complexity and smaller economy of scale probably erases the savings to a large degree so I wouldn't be expecting huge savings on the more expensive machines. One final consideration is for machines with dGPUs - that's quite a colossal saving ($200+ straight out) if it can just be deleted because the iGPU is beefy enough to replace it in all but the most powerful machines.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Apple loves its price points. If switching processors reduces Apple’s costs, I expect the savings to be pushed into new features like mini-LED screen, or adding LTE functionality (licensing cellular patents isn’t cheap), USB/TB4, or something else in an order to entice users while keeping the same retail prices on their computers.

 

[glindon]

OEMs don't pay Intel anywhere near that price.

ASP is around $300 per cpu per intel's financials and Apple never uses the cheaper intel cpus.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

I expect 100-200$ dollar price drop max.

I mean at the end of the day I don't expect any price drop at all, especially when Apple brings out big numbers on the performance side of things to the table.

 

[Zwhaler]

I expect all first gen ARM macs to be at least 25% cheaper than equivalent intel macs. It is crucial the transition goes quickly. Second gen ARM macs will come at a premium because of "features"...

I really doubt this. If Apple beats Intel at performance and energy efficiency, why would the MSRP go down? If it's cheaper to produce per unit, profits go up. Apple also needs to recoup billions of R&D expenses as quickly as possible. Long term, keeping the price the same or raising it allows them to make more profit. Do you think cutting prices takes precedence over profits??

 

[JPack]

Why the heck would Apple drop the price? Why would they leave margins on the table?

Apple is coming from a position of technological strength. These are fast processors. When they used Intel, consumers could cross shop between a PC and compare price/performance. With A14-based Macs, consumers cannot get A14 performance elsewhere. Why would they lower the price?

 

[UltimateSyn]

Why the heck would Apple drop the price? Why would they leave margins on the table?

Apple is coming from a position of technological strength. These are fast processors. When they used Intel, consumers could cross shop between a PC and compare price/performance. With A14-based Macs, consumers cannot get A14 performance elsewhere. Why would they lower the price?

To increase sales.

 

[JPack]

To increase sales.

Sales come naturally from well-designed, high performance products.

 

[robbieduncan]

I expect all first gen ARM macs to be at least 25% cheaper than equivalent intel macs. It is crucial the transition goes quickly. Second gen ARM macs will come at a premium because of "features"...

Don’t remember 25% cheaper Macs on the PPC->Intel transition

 

[ernstinvisiblelubitsch]

I think any savings Apple sees on Apple Silicon over Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs is going to be offset by the increased price of miniLED displays and whatever other QOL features they put into the new ARM mac products (1080p camera, T3 chip?, I imagine there’s a bunch of other stuff), so it’ll be the same end price for the user.

 

[sublunar]

I would say Apple would keep the existing price points or they risk devaluing the ARM machine in the eyes of consumers. They can make the machine better value of course, with universal binaries coming back I expect generous base RAM and storage. The 16gb RAM and 512 ssd look like good base figures.

As mentioned already we should expect miniLED to be one of the headline features to get people to buy ARM macs.

 

[WiseAJ]

The same, pure and simple. Apple's mantra is premium products and pricing, they recently doubled the price of ram on the 13" MBP, and they have a thunderbolt cable priced at 129. This is not a company that prices its products under what they perceive as premium or as I put it exorbitant

They didn't double the price of ram on that machine. They mistakenly discounted it and corrected it to the same price as the previous generation's upgrade.

 

[glindon]

What you pay off the shelf is at least 60% more than what an OEM pay. Probably significantly less that that for the larger companies.

Prices won't go down. Apple will need to maintain the cash stock pile for when they undoubtably balls it up, like thay have done on the previous occasions when they try and get involved in thier own CPU's.

Current ASP according to Intel from their financials is around $300 per cpu so while it's easy to speculate on what deals OEMs get from intel, we know they're paying an average of $300 per cpu. Retail sales are tiny compared to OEM sales so that doesn't change ASP much. There is no such thing as buying a retail mobile cpu from intel. Bulk of intel sales are for lower end cpus in laptops which drives the ASP down. Apple doesn't use any cheap intel cpus so based on ASP they are paying more than $300 for each cpu.

 

[TGM85]

I don’t expect any price drop at all. Prices will probably remain about the same, a mac being a Veblen good in many ways.

 

[JPack]

Current ASP according to Intel from their financials is around $300 per cpu so while it's easy to speculate on what deals OEMs get from intel, we know they're paying an average of $300 per cpu. Retail sales are tiny compared to OEM sales so that doesn't change ASP much. There is no such thing as buying a retail mobile cpu from intel. Bulk of intel sales are for lower end cpus in laptops which drives the ASP down. Apple doesn't use any cheap intel cpus so based on ASP they are paying more than $300 for each cpu.

I'm not sure how you can even come close to being certain when Intel lists Atom processors for $30 and Xeons for $13,000.

Not to mention Intel is infamous for their heavy rebate schemes everywhere from Japan to the EU, which has sparked lawsuits globally.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

[snip]

Not to mention Intel is infamous for their heavy rebate schemes everywhere from Japan to the EU, which has sparked lawsuits globally.

Which Apple doesn’t participate in. You can tell because there are no gaudy intel stickers on the palm rest of any Apple computer.

 

[glindon]

I'm not sure how you can even come close to being certain when Intel lists Atom processors for $30 and Xeons for $13,000.

Not to mention Intel is infamous for their heavy rebate schemes everywhere from Japan to the EU, which has sparked lawsuits globally.

Intel lists server and consumer divisions separately in their SEC financials. ASP for server chips is around $600 per their financials.

 

[JPack]

Which Apple doesn’t participate in. You can tell because there are no gaudy intel stickers on the palm rest of any Apple computer.

It has nothing to do with case badges. The exclusivity rebates were designed to retain loyalty for customers who sold little or no AMD processors in their lineup.

 

[justin216]

I expect a pitch of "better performance, better battery life, same "great" price points".

They're not going to undercut the iPad pricing strategy I don't imagine, so I don't think we'll see any laptop under, say, $899. Maybe they drop some of the machines $100-200 to encourage sales and adoption, but no more than that...and that could just be on the Air, Mini, or similar to drive unit sales.

 

[glindon]

I expect a pitch of "better performance, better battery life, same "great" price points".

They're not going to undercut the iPad pricing strategy I don't imagine, so I don't think we'll see any laptop under, say, $899. Maybe they drop some of the machines $100-200 to encourage sales and adoption, but no more than that...and that could just be on the Air, Mini, or similar to drive unit sales.

I think for lower cost machines like the Air that would seem about right. But for something like 16" MacBooks the apple silicon also includes the GPU so the costs of a dGPU can be eliminated as well. So we may see $400-500 price cuts.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

It has nothing to do with case badges. The exclusivity rebates were designed to retain loyalty for customers who sold little or no AMD processors in their lineup.

Oh, that makes sense.

 

[ondert]

Don’t worry people, Tim will never satisfy us. He’s a salesman to rip everbody off.