Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales
There's plenty of reasons why Apple would halt M2 (beyond the fact that M3 production should be ramping now).<p>There are clear market reasons at play: for example Samsung Electronics have estimated a 96% drop in profit for the quarter and have subsequently reduced production of memory chips.<p>Demand for new hardware is expected to be softer:<p>- WFH brought forward a lot of purchases<p>- Inflation/cost of living pressures will slow upgrade cycles<p>- Consumers are forced to redirect funds to mortgages due to higher interest rates<p>- The global economy is slowing, with large corporations already laying off significant numbers of staff<p>However it's also worth noting that this is a small serving of data with a big serving of conjecture: Whenever Apple decreases production it's always toted in the media as some kind of fuck up or failure, only for the quarterly results to convincingly disprove that theory.<p>The HN talk about the strong dollar isn't entirely relevant, the USA alone is a massive buyer of apple hardware, and a strong dollar is common.