New analyst reports have predicted a rapid growth for the AI-equipped PC sector over the coming years.
By 2027, Canalys believes that three in five (60%) PCs shipped will be AI-capable, with as many as one in five meeting the criteria this year alone.
The healthy growth is credited to businesses’ refresh cycles, with many expected to be upgrading soon as they grapple with EOS for their preferred operating systems.
PCs are becoming more AI-capable
Current trends suggest that over 100 million AI PCs will be sold in 2025. Windows 10 will reach End of Service (EOS) by October 2025, prompting many businesses to upgrade their hardware to futureproof their IT against subsequent operating systems beyond Windows 11.
Despite a slow downward trend, Windows 10 still accounts for around two in three (67%) instances of Windows, highlighting the huge shift that we’re likely to see in 2024. Windows 11 adoption currently stands at a disappointing 27% (via Statcounter).
The emerging AI-capable PC market continues to be shadowed by a pretty large grey area, though. Currently, an AI PC is seen as one that possesses a chip or block to accelerate AI computing, though this is expected to shift as the technology improves.
For example, Canalys’s medium-term expectation is that an AI PC will have an NPU performance of at least 10 TOPS, plus a minimum of 16GB DRAM. Longer-term expectations are even greater.
Already, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus have all signaled plans to deliver new AI-capable PCs, but manufacturers are limited by roadmaps set out by chipmakers like Intel and AMD.
A separate forecast reveals that these estimates include all M-series Macs. In Q3 2023, Apple accounted for 9.8% of all global PC shipments. While it’s unclear how many of these were powered by M-series chips, we suspect that an overwhelming majority, if not virtually all of them, were M models.
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