- MacBook Neo is a ‘shock’ for the PC industry, says Asus
- Apple’s rivals are now ‘seriously’ discussing how to compete
- That answer may be complicated by rising global memory costs
For a long time, Apple has refrained from competing at the more affordable end of the computer market, which may have led to some complacency among competitors. That complacency has now been shattered with the launch of the MacBook Neo, and an Asus executive has neatly summed up the industry’s reaction to what is now one of the best budget laptops money can buy.
On a March 10 earnings call (transcribed via Seeking Alpha), Asus CFO Nick Wu said that Apple’s rivals will have to adapt quickly to the new situation — and with the ongoing memory shortage making RAM prices incredibly expensive for PC makers, that may not be easy.
On the call, Wu noted that: “given Apple’s historically very high prices, the launch of such an affordable product is certainly a shock to the entire market.” Wu’s comments were translated from Chinese by an interpreter.
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Wu doesn’t think existing PC manufacturers will sit idly by after the launch of MacBook Neo, adding: “I think all PC vendors, including upstream vendors like Microsoft, Intel and AMD, are all taking this very seriously, and are seriously discussing how to compete with this product in the entire PC ecosystem. So I think there are a lot of ongoing discussions about how to compete with Neo.”
Figuring out how to compete
Competing with the MacBook Neo is clearly new territory for companies like Asus, because this isn’t just any old company we’re talking about – this is Apple, one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet, with deep resources that allow it to develop and market competitive products.
Wu believed that the MacBook Neo has a weakness in that it only comes with 8GB of non-upgradable memory and that “this may limit certain applications.” That’s true to an extent—in our review of the MacBook Neo, our author found that “while you could fire up Blender and work on complex 3D scenes, Neo will struggle.”
That said, Apple’s RAM uses a unified memory architecture with a shared memory pool, which in layman’s terms means it’s faster than regular PC RAM. In fact, our review concluded that “Overall, the performance of the MacBook Neo is very impressive for the price.”
Finally, Wu believes that “the entire PC system will launch similar products to compete with Apple.” And it certainly makes sense – Apple’s ability to bring premium feel quality to a budget device like the MacBook Neo means the competition has to up their game. The old low-end PC laptops with their flimsy plastic housings and unmatched performance won’t cut it anymore.
However, the ongoing RAM crisis may hamper their ability to compete. On the earnings call, Wu made the point that “memory prices are up over 100% from Q4 last year to Q1 this year.” When Asus’ existing inventory is used up, “we will definitely have to adjust the final product prices to some extent to reflect this change,” Wu said.
If affordable laptops are no longer very affordable due to rising memory costs, that could work in Apple’s favor. Given Apple’s massive buying power, it is able to demand lower RAM prices from its suppliers than some of its competitors, somewhat insulating it from the component chaos.
As Wu’s comments have made clear, Apple’s entry into the budget end of the PC market has sent its rivals into disarray. If PC manufacturers are moved to improve their offerings to compete with Apple, it will benefit consumers everywhere, whether they prefer Windows or macOS.
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