MacBook Air OLED reportedly delayed until at least 2028 – here’s why

Apple might be struggling to balance the cost of the upgrade with the laptop’s price tag

News By Darren Allan published 7 November 2024

• Apple’s MacBook Air may not get OLED until 2028 or even later
• Previous rumors suggested the screen upgrade could come in 2027
• It seems Apple is having difficulty balancing cost and supply chain issues

Apple’s plans for introducing OLED screens with its laptops seem to be a constant churn of rumors, and here’s another which claims that as far as the MacBook Air is concerned, it may not get this display upgrade until well into the future.

While the MacBook Pro is still expected to make the move to OLED in 2026 – bearing in mind this is just rumored, although it’s been put forward quite strongly at this point – the MacBook Air might have to wait until 2028, or possibly even later.

That’s the word from a new report published by Korean tech site The Elec – again, add skepticism appropriately – which asserts that, according to industry sources, the MacBook Air won’t get the OLED treatment in 2027 as previously rumored.

Why not? Well, the reason is wrapped up in pricing, as well as issues with the supply chain.

The MacBook Air is, of course, Apple’s mainstream laptop targeted at the consumer, and its pricing is quite different to the MacBook Pro, which is aimed at professional usage (and creatives, or enthusiasts, or others with deeper wallets when it comes to spending on tech).

Introducing OLED is a fair old hike on the cost of the laptop, as you might expect – fancy screens do not come cheap. And while this isn’t such an issue for the more weightily priced MacBook Pro, it’s more of a problem with the MacBook Air, which can’t take so much strain put on its affordability.

What this means is that Apple needs to suss out how to make the MacBook Air and OLED work, price-wise. Rather than using two-stack tandem OLED tech – panels with two emission layers, offering better brightness, and longevity of the screen – as rumored for the MacBook Pro, Apple could look at a single-stack OLED panel for the MacBook Air.

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