Apple To Introduce A New Retina Display Macbook At WWDC 2012

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo issued a note to investors reporting that Apple plans on releasing an entire new lineup of MacBooks.

Kuo believes that Apple will revamp the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks while offering a new higher priced Retina display mac notebook on the side.

Kuo Notes:

We expect Apple (US) to unveil a new MacBook series independent from the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. We expect the new MacBook to have the following features:

(1) Basic 13” model to be priced at US$1,199
(2) No disc drive
(3) To come in both SSD and HDD
(4) Lighter and slimmer than MacBook Pro, with equal computing power
(5) Retinal display with tapered edge, larger battery capacity

Apple also plans to discontinue the 17-inch MacBook this year as it only accounts for 1% of it’s notebook sells.

MacRumors Reports:

In that scenario, new iMacs are not accounted for in the list and the J30/J31 model numbers represent updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models while the D2 model represents this new Retina-equipped 15-inch MacBook.

Kuo believes that Apple will wait until next year to re-simplify its notebook lines with Intel’s Haswell platform, at which point the company will merge the MacBook Pro and this new MacBook model, leaving a set of four models: 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs and 13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks.

We do find Kuo’s claims to be somewhat difficult to believe, as we fail to see how this new “MacBook” model is substantially different in performance from the MacBook Pro and thus do not see why users would be interested in a non-Retina MacBook Pro given the existence of this new MacBook line.