Apple announced the New MacBook Air on October 30, 2018. It is an exciting update with a lot of internal and external changes. The company is doing its best to put a product out there that is appealing from every angle. However, as appealing as the New MacBook Air might be, the supply chain is not optimistic at all. A recent DigiTimes report claims that “supply chain partners are conservative about order momentum”.

The main concern is that, despite the New MacBook air being sexier, smarter, and faster, the price of the product is higher than previous models, or even those from the competition. That is a key factor of concern for suppliers when it comes to gaging momentum, and predicting long- and mid-terms performance.

Supply chain partners are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward whether the higher-than-expected pricings for new MacBook Air will affect its sales performance.

Numbers partially back up the concern. There were 20 million MacBook Air notebooks sold in 2015. The number fell to 19 million in 2017, and in the first half of 2018, sales reached 7.8 million units. That leaves a lot of units to be sold in the second half of the year to reach and equal the number in the previous year.

Through product updates and price hikes for new MacBook Air model, Apple seeks to sustain its revenue and profit growths,

What the report is claiming is that basically the supply chain is skeptical. Unless the sales start ramping up, suppliers will not hold their breaths “on orders from Apple to support their revenue and profit performance”.