While some retailers are banking on PCs with newly-introduced AI features – including Copilot+ PCs – as driving sales, new research has indicated that AI functionalities are not the only factor that will contribute to the immediate growth of sales in the PC segment.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) says that although AI PCs are selling well and will likely continue to do so, the growth in PC sales comes down more to the usual refresh cycle rather than the onboard generative AI capabilities of the new laptops on the market.
Companies such as Microsoft are pushing the advantages of generative AI for the average consumer’s workflow, but IDC suggests that customers aren’t immediately responding to the AI features specifically.
With several manufacturers now flooding the market with AI PCs, consumers who need upgrades are buying what’s available and these happen to be AI PCs. They are upgrading because their devices are old and not because they are specifically attracted to the device’s AI capabilities.
As the IDC put it: “While AI has been a buzzword of late, it has yet to be a purchase driver among PC buyers. Consumers are yet to fully grasp the importance of an on-board Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and are likely to need more education or handholding from OEMs.”
The IDC predicts that the near-term outlook for AI PCs will be modest, but in the long run, more and more PCs will come with an NPU which is critical to run AI operations on the devices. Eventually, producing processors without one will just become impractical.
The IDC report also pointed out to the fact that the end of support for Windows 10 next year is further pushing a refresh cycle among commercial customers, and some businesses will use the opportunity to switch over to a Mac. This, says IDC, gives Apple an opportunity to grow its share from 9.1 per cent now to 10.2 per cent in 2026.
According to the key findings of the report, which you can read all about on ChannelNews here, shipments of personal computing devices including traditional PCs and tablets are expected to grow 2.6 per cent year over year in 2024 to 398.9 million units.
The tablet market is set to see a 7.2 per cent year-on -year growth, while the traditional PC market will remain flat with 261 million units shipped this year. For traditional PCs, global markets excluding China are expected to grow 2.8 per cent in 2024
