The International Data Corporation (IDC) has released a new forecast showing shipments of AI PCs, computers with specific SoC capabilities to run generative AI tasks, will increase from almost 50 million units this year, to over 167 million units by 2027.
IDC predicts, by the end of the forecast period, AI PCs will represent almost 60% of all PC shipments globally.
Group Vice President of Devices and Consumer Research, Tom Mainelli said, “As we enter a new year, the hype around generative AI has reached a fever pitch, and the PC industry is running fast to capitalize on the expected benefits of bringing AI capabilities down from the cloud to the client.”
“Promises around enhanced user productivity via faster performance, plus lower inferencing costs, and the benefit of on-device privacy and security, have driven strong IT decision-maker interest in AI PCs. In 2024, we’ll see AI PC shipments begin to ramp, and over the next few years, we expect the technology to move from niche to a majority.”
Until recently, running an AI task locally on a PC had to be done via the central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processing unit (GPU), or a combination of the two.
This can, however, have a negative impact on the PC’s performance and battery life. PC silicon vendors have now introduced AI-specific silicon to their SoCs, called neural processing units (NPUs), to run these tasks.
So far, IDC has identified three types of NPU enabled AI PCs.
Hardware-enabled AI PCs, which include an NPU offering <40 tera operations per second (TOPS) performance and enables specific AI features within apps. Qualcomm, Apple, AMD, and Intel will all ship chips in this category.
Next-generation AI PCs, which include an NPU with 40–60 TOPS performance and an AI-first operating system (OS), allowing for persistent and pervasive AI capabilities in the OS and apps. Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel have announced future chips for this category. Microsoft is also expected to roll out updates to Windows 11 as well.
Advanced AI PCs, which offer >60 TOPS of NPU performance. No silicon vendors have announced these products, however, IDC expects them to appear in the coming years. This forecast doesn’t include advanced AI PCs yet.
Over the next two years, hardware-enabled AI PC shipments are expected to rise quickly, and next generation AI PCs are expected to dominate the market come the end of the forecast period.
IDC believes shipments of next-generation AI PCs will double hardware-enabled PCs by 2027, and many will be sold to commercial buyers.
The three main reasons to bring AI from the cloud to the client are to enhance performance, to enhance privacy and security, and to lower cost.
This report marks IDC’s first for the worldwide artificial intelligence PC market for 2023–2027.
