Apple caught off guard by surge in AI-driven Mac demand

Apple saw its iPhone business and Services division take centre stage in its latest quarterly results. Still, the Mac segment delivered an unexpected upside — fueled in part by rising demand for artificial intelligence workloads.

Market expectations had placed Mac revenue in the lower $8 billion range. Yet, Apple reported $8.4 billion for the second quarter ending March 28, marking a clear outperformance for a segment not typically viewed as a primary revenue driver. Analysts had also anticipated little to no growth compared to last year, but instead, Mac sales rose by 6% year-over-year. Overall, the company posted total revenue of $111.2 billion, reflecting a 17% increase from the same period a year earlier.

Apple credited part of the Mac growth to its recent hardware releases, including the popular MacBook Neo. However, these devices were only available for a limited time during the quarter, with preorders starting on March 4 and most shipments occurring later in the month. Some demand likely spilt into April as certain configurations quickly went out of stock.

During the earnings call, CEO Tim Cook told analysts that demand for the Neo had been “off the charts,” surpassing internal forecasts. He added that Apple recorded a quarterly high in new Mac customers, partly driven by interest in the new device lineup.

Cook pointed to an unexpected factor behind the surge: the growing use of Macs to run local AI models, including tools like OpenClaw. This trend contributed to strong demand for higher-performance machines such as the Mac mini and Mac Studio, both of which have recently faced supply shortages.

“Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand,” Cook said, referring to the Mac mini and Studio. He also highlighted that the Mac mini became the best-selling desktop in China, where interest in AI tools has been accelerating.

Despite the strong annual growth, Mac revenue remained flat compared to the previous quarter, suggesting that the surge in AI-driven demand has not yet fully scaled. Cook indicated that it could take several months for Apple to align supply with demand for its desktop lineup.

“We’re not at the point where we’re saying this [constraint] is going to end anytime soon. And it’s not because of a problem, per se, other than we under-called the demand,” he explained.

Enterprise adoption has also contributed to the momentum. Apple noted that companies such as Perplexity AI have increasingly chosen Mac systems as their preferred platform for developing enterprise-level AI assistants.

Cook also acknowledged ongoing supply constraints for the MacBook Neo and noted shifts in the education sector, where institutions such as Kansas City Public Schools are replacing Chromebooks with Apple’s latest Mac devices.