Kuo shares MacBook Neo shipment and touchscreen updates, OLED MacBook Air timing

MacBook Neo launch day has arrived, and supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has some interesting insights around Apple’s first $599 laptop. Kuo also puts a timeline on the arrival of Apple’s first OLED MacBook Air.

First, Kuo has some credibility around MacBook Neo, after claiming last June that Apple would release “an approximately 13-inch display and powered by the A18 Pro processor” in “late 4Q25 or early 1Q26.” Technically, we’re in late 1Q26, not early, but the chip and display size are spot on. Kuo also pointed to “silver, blue, pink, and yellow” colors which indeed arrived as silver, indigo, blush, and citrus.

At the time, Kuo forecasted 5-7 million MacBook Neo units sold in 2026. Adjusting for the later-than-expected release, Kuo adjusts that down to 4.5-5 million units (with 2-2.5 million being sold in the first half of the year). This appears to be the consensus now. The supply chain analyst says that Quanta is the exclusive MacBook Neo assembler for now, but Foxconn could join “in the near future.”

Looking further ahead, Kuo says that Luxshare could be vying for Apple’s MacBook Neo assembly business.

Touchscreen MacBook Neo

More interesting is Kuo’s talk about a touchscreen:

Neo 2 was originally expected to feature a touch panel to compete with Chromebooks (50%+ of which support touch), but my latest industry checks suggest Neo 2 may not adopt it.

Given MacBook Neo’s core purpose of bringing the MacBook experience into the $600 market, not supporting touch is no surprise. Instead, Apple’s first-ever touchscreen MacBook is expected to be Ultra premium.

Still, touch doesn’t have to mean high-end, so it’s not an impossible scenario. But for now, Kuo is throwing cold water on his own expectation that MacBook Neo will upgrade to touchscreen in round two of the hardware.

OLED MacBook Pro and Air

Elsewhere in his latest, Kuo corroborates Mark Gurman’s reporting in Bloomberg that claims a major MacBook Pro upgrade is coming with OLED touch panels. Kuo expects this machine to arrive “in late 4Q26 or early 1Q27,” although as we saw earlier, timing can be hard to predict.

And speaking of timing, Kuo echoes Gurman’s claim that Apple has a MacBook Air revision with OLED panels on the roadmap. The bad news? Kuo predicts this to happen “around 2028 or 2029.”