Apple was surprised by AI-driven demand for Macs

Apple’s iPhone gross sales and Providers income had been the celebrities of the present within the tech large’s most up-to-date quarter, however the Mac quietly outperformed — helped by rising demand for AI workloads.

Wall Avenue buyers had anticipated to see Mac income within the low $8 billion vary, however Apple reported $8.4 billion within the second quarter ended March 28 — a notable beat for a non-core section of the tech large’s enterprise. As well as, buyers forward of earnings believed that Mac gross sales could be primarily flat year-over-year. As a substitute, Mac gross sales had been up 6% on an annual foundation, the corporate advised buyers. The corporate’s whole income was $111.2 billion, a 17% enhance from the identical interval final yr.

Apple chalked up a number of the Mac progress to current product launches, together with the well-received MacBook Neo. Nevertheless, these enjoyable, colourful computer systems had been solely on sale for just a few weeks after the March 4 preorders started. Realistically, most models shipped mid- to late March, and a few demand might have been pushed into April as sure fashions offered out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner advised analysts on the corporate’s Q2 earnings name on Thursday that buyer demand for the Neo was “off the charts” and better than Apple had anticipated. He additionally famous that Apple set a report within the quarter for purchasers new to the Mac, partly because of the Neo.

Cook dinner attributed the Mac gross sales progress to using the platform for operating native AI fashions, like OpenClaw — one thing that took Apple considerably without warning as Mac mini and Mac Studio gadgets offered out in current weeks.

“Each of those are superb platforms for AI and agentic instruments, and the client recognition of that’s occurring sooner than what we had predicted, and so we noticed larger than anticipated demand,” Cook dinner stated of those Mac gross sales. He additionally famous that the Mac mini was the top-selling desktop in China — a market that’s been in an OpenClaw frenzy as of late.

Nonetheless, Mac income was flat on a quarter-over-quarter foundation, suggesting this new demand has but to scale. Cook dinner stated it could take Apple “a number of months” to succeed in supply-demand stability on the Mac mini and Studio fashions.

“We’re not on the level the place we’re saying this [constraint] goes to finish anytime quickly. And it’s not due to an issue, per se, apart from we simply under-called the demand,” Cook dinner defined.

Enterprise demand for the Mac was additionally at play. Apple pointed to a few bigger firms, together with Perplexity, that had turned to Mac as their most popular platform for constructing enterprise-grade AI assistants.

He additionally stated Apple was “provide constrained on the MacBook Neo,” and has even seen faculty programs, like Kansas Metropolis Public Colleges, dropping Chromebooks for the Neo.