Asus: MacBook Neo shocks the PC market as rivals scramble

Apple’s foray into the affordable laptop space with the MacBook Neo has industry watchers re-evaluating the landscape. On an earnings call held March 10, Asus chief financial officer Nick Wu warned that rivals will need to move quickly to respond, especially as a memory shortage drives RAM costs higher for PC makers. Wu framed Apple’s move as a blunt disruption to a market long accustomed to premium pricing for MacBook-level quality.

Wu added that the reaction isn’t limited to PC makers alone. He said that across the ecosystem—upstream players like Microsoft, Intel, and AMD—there are serious conversations underway about how to compete with the Neo in the broader PC market. The takeaway, he suggested, is that competition is intensifying in real time.

Competing with the Neo is clearly uncharted territory for many vendors. The device’s 8GB of soldered, non-upgradable memory is a notable limitation for certain workflows. For example, reviewers have pointed out that resource-heavy tasks in applications like Blender can expose the constraint, even as the overall performance-to-price ratio remains impressive thanks to Apple’s unified memory architecture, which tends to feel faster than conventional PC RAM.

Wu believes the market will still see new products designed to challenge Apple head-on, with premium-feel quality extending into more affordable machines. The idea is that the old breed of low-cost laptops—often flimsy and underpowered—will no longer be sufficient in a world where Apple has managed to deliver a compelling budget option.

The RAM crunch, however, could complicate these efforts. Wu noted that memory prices rose by more than 100% from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year. Once Asus exhausts its current stock, adjustments to end-product pricing may be necessary to reflect the higher memory costs. In this environment, Apple’s scale provides leverage to secure better RAM terms from suppliers, potentially insulating it somewhat from broader component chaos.

All told, Apple’s entry into the budget end of the PC market has jolted competitors into action. If PC makers raise their game to contend with the Neo, consumers across Windows and macOS ecosystems could benefit from sharper options and improved value.