Apple has still not confirmed when they would be releasing the latest version of their popular ultraportable laptop, the Apple MacBook Air.

There are rumors that say Apple may be launching the new laptop sometime next year. However, a new report has revealed that this might not be the case and that Apple may be launching the new 2016 Apple MacBook Air as early as this month.

Some reports who have claimed a possible October launch of the new MacBook Air cited a recent interview with HIS Market Technology director for Tablet and Notebook PCs — Rhoda Alexander — who mentioned that Apple will likely still be launching the MacBook Air within the year.

The analyst mentioned that they had sources who claimed that Apple actually started the development and production of the new laptop during the second quarter of this year. Based on this, they predicted that the company probably plans to release the laptop late this year.

Alexander also revealed that because of the production schedule, it will be highly unlikely that the MacBook Air will be sporting Intel's latest Kaby Lake processor. She believes that the laptop will likely be coming with the current generation Skylake processor, as Intel had not yet released its next generation processor when the laptop's production had started.

Other reports are claiming otherwise as Apple may have found a way around the problem, making it possible for them to incorporate the new chips on their latest laptop. Having the Kaby Lake processor on board would certainly add more to the overall desirability of the laptop as it provides substantially more power than its predecessor.

Apart from the processor, the 2016 MacBook Air is also believed to be coming with AMD's Polaris-based graphics card. If this is indeed true, then it would be quite a step up from the previous model, which only came with an Intel HD Graphics 6000 on-board GPU.