Consumer electronics retailer iStore sees the new MacBook Neo as a major sales draw in 2026.
At $599 in the US and R11,999 in South Africa, this is the cheapest new Mac computer on the market.
With the Neo being released at the beginning of the month along with a slew of other products — including a new iPad, MacBook Air, iPhone 17e and Studio Display — Apple is seeking to take up share in a market that it has largely left untouched in recent years.
Until recently, the cheapest Mac computer was the Mac Mini, starting at R12,999, and the most affordable laptop from the Silicon Valley giant was the MacBook Air, starting at R17,999.
Apple is hoping that its premium metal build, thin design and Mac operating system will be enough to take market share from the likes of Google’s Chromebook devices and lower-priced Windows-based laptops.
iStore, the only premium reseller of Apple products in Africa, expects this strategy will translate into higher sales in South Africa given that local consumers are price-conscious.
“We know that there are hundreds and thousands of PCs being sold every year at the R10,000 to R12,000 price range. Traditionally, that’s not a space where you could get a brand-new Apple laptop,” Linda van der Nest, chief commercial officer at iStore, said in an interview.
HP, Lenovo and Dell dominate the South African laptop market by volume, largely due to their more affordable price points.
“The difference here is in that price band there are a lot of PC brands … [but] it’s a plastic PC; it doesn’t have the immersive experience or the macOS,” she said.
According to research firm Statista, South African laptop and tablet market revenue was estimated at $1.2bn in 2025.
“What Apple has built with MacBook Neo is a beautiful product. So our view is very much that it’s going to bring thousands more people that traditionally thought a PC was their only option into the Apple world on a Mac. We’re super excited about it,” said Van der Nest.
While many have pegged the new offering as geared towards students, Van der Nest said there is opportunity to capture people across the market. “It’s actually for the normal knowledge worker out there doing mail, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Safari browsing, watching YouTube, [perhaps] doing some basic video editing or content creation. The Neo can do all of that and more,” Van der Nest said.
South Africa has continued to grow as a market for Apple products, despite the hefty price tags that the brand is normally associated with.
Local sales growth has increased South Africa’s importance in Apple’s rollout of new products. Whereas in the past new Apple products would arrive in South Africa only some time after their US releases, the country has started to have the latest devices on hand at the same time as the global release.
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