Winners and Losers: Apple updates its Mac line as smartphone sales plummet - TrustedReviews

OPINION: It’s the play erstwhile again, meaning it’s clip for america to callback our victor and loser from the tech headlines of the past week. 

The astir breathtaking quality this week came from Apple arsenic it unveiled its latest MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers, making the institution an casual prime for our winner. With that said, the iPhone shaper has astir surely been affected by a wide diminution successful the smartphone market. 

Read connected to find retired much astir this week’s victor and loser.

Winner: Apple 

Apple is our victor this week aft the institution softly made a large announcement regarding its Mac line. 

Not lone did Apple unveil updates to its MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers, but it besides showcased the almighty caller chips these Macs volition tally on. 

The M2 Pro and the M2 Max are the latest additions to the company’s ain Apple Silicon line, with the Pro scaling up the existing M2 architecture with an up to 12-core CPU, up to 19-core GPU and up to 32GB of accelerated unified memory. 

The Max takes this adjacent further with an up to 38-core GPU and up to 96GB of unified memory, making it the world’s astir almighty and businesslike pro laptop chip, according to Apple. 

Both chips tin beryllium recovered successful the caller 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops, portion the M2 and M2 Pro powerfulness the caller Mac Mini. 

The MacBook scope successful wide has seen immoderate unthinkable leaps since Apple began processing its ain chips to regenerate the Intel-powered MacBooks of old, and we can’t hold to spot what these caller chipsets bring to the table.

Loser: Smartphones

Our loser this week is beauteous overmuch each smartphone shaper (Apple included) aft it was recovered that the mobile marketplace saw a immense diminution astatine the extremity of 2022. 

According to a market report by Canalys Research, Q4 of 2022 marked the worst yearly and Q4 show successful an full decade. 

While this is atrocious quality for each shaper involves, Apple came retired the champion of those affected arsenic the institution managed to snatch the apical spot from Samsung erstwhile it comes to marketplace share. 

Apple presently holds 25% of the marketplace portion Samsung falls somewhat abbreviated astatine 20%, though of people this could each alteration arsenic the second unveils its Galaxy S23 enactment successful February. Meanwhile, Xiaomi sweeps successful astatine 3rd spot with 11% of the Q4 market, intimately followed by Oppo and Vivo. 

Canalys attributes the steep year-on-year driblet successful show to smartphone vendors struggling successful the hard macroeconomic situation that erupted successful 2022, with high-end devices feeling the brunt of the situation successful Q4. 

You mightiness deliberation that this would beryllium bully quality for fund telephone makers, but debased and mid-range smartphones were the archetypal to endure earlier successful the year.  

The outlook isn’t looking each that optimistic for 2023 either, with Canalys forecasting level to marginal maturation for the smartphone marketplace this twelvemonth with “interest complaint hikes, economical slowdowns and an progressively struggling labour market” among the reasons to blame.