Apple unveiled its long-awaited 15-inch MacBook Air at WWDC last month. Despite the product receiving almost universally positive reviews, shipments have reportedly gotten off to a slower start than expected.

Still, I think there’s some important context to keep in mind when it comes to supply chain reports like this one.

Today’s report comes from Digitimes and cites industry sources inside Apple’s supply chain. According to the report, the 15-inch MacBook Air “didn’t meet customer demand expectations,” and there are “calls for the supply chain to put shipments on hold.”

“Reports stated that the supply chain’s July shipment volume is 50% less than the original estimate,” the report goes on to say. “Industry sources revealed that demand for the 15-inch MacBook Air has already declined. Some customers are even requesting a shipment volume reduction to avoid building up a front-end inventory.”

With the 15-inch MacBook Air now available, the supply chain is looking toward the release of new MacBook Pro models sometime in early next year. Suppliers hope that the new M3 MacBook Pro lineup will “generate a wave of purchases,” but the MacBook Pro is generally not a “high-volume” product in comparison to the MacBook Air.

Best 15-inch MacBook Air accessories:

There’s important context to keep in mind with supply chain reports such as this one: Not every Apple product can be a best seller. The 13-inch MacBook Air is the best-selling laptop in the world, so of course the 15-inch MacBook Air can’t match that in terms of demand.

It’s entirely possible that Apple and its suppliers overestimated the demand for the 15-inch MacBook Air. If that’s the case, the solution is just to realign expectations, scale back production, and have a better plan when the M3 version is released. The solution is not to kill the 15-inch form factor and write it off as a failure.

Prior to the 15-inch MacBook Air being announced at WWDC, reports suggested that Apple’s suppliers had already stockpiled quite a bit of inventory. The thinking has been that Apple had initially planned to release it last year alongside the redesigned M2 13-inch MacBook Air.

It’s likely that some people would’ve opted for the 15-inch MacBook Air had it been available at the same time as the 13-inch last year, but they couldn’t wait and instead bought what was available at the time.

Even despite these rumors, I’m optimistic about the future of the 15-inch MacBook Air. I just hope Apple realizes that it’s a valuable product to have on the market and doesn’t give it the same treatment it gave the iPhone 12/13 mini.

In fact, for some people, the 15-inch MacBook Air has only served as further reasoning for why Apple should make a 12-inch MacBook again.

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