Apple is playing catch-up with surging demand for its Mac Mini, which has gotten an unexpected boost from AI.
CEO Tim Cook said on Thursday’s March earnings call that the Mac Mini and Mac Studio, two of its desktop computer models, are both “amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools.”
“The customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted,” Cook said. “And so we saw higher-than-expected demand.”
He said the company is facing supply constraints on both models heading into the June quarter that could take several months to balance with demand.
In the March quarter, Mac revenue rose 6% year over year to $8.4 billion, despite supply constraints. Cook told analysts that Apple would have “less flexibility” in the Mac supply chain, coming off a period with record new customers. The new budget MacBook Neo also contributed to the slew of new Mac customers.
As Apple moves to close the supply-demand gap, the company said it plans to bring Mac Mini production to the US later this year as part of its $600 billion commitment to investing in American manufacturing.
Apple’s US website and some third-party retailers have sold out of the $599 base model of the Mac Mini in recent weeks, and Apple has estimated shipping delays on higher-memory configurations. On eBay, some pre-owned models were listed for $200 above retail price in April.
The uptick in Mac Mini sales is due in part to its “ability to run advanced models locally in ways that simply weren’t possible before,” Cook said. This year, tech enthusiasts have been all about OpenClaw, a rapidly evolving, open-source AI tool that can run locally on a computer, fueling demand for higher-memory devices.
The Mac Mini is filling that role.
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