The future of the personal computer is a bit hard to figure out at the moment, and that’s partly because of the sudden rise of artificial intelligence, analysts say.
Analyst house IDC this week released its latest quarterly PC-shipments forecast, predicting that demand growth will finally return to the market in 2024, following a couple years of post-pandemic sobriety. Gartner also recently came to a similar conclusion, and it makes sense when you consider that Microsoft will cease to support Windows 10 in 2025, pushing many IT departments towards a refresh.
However, according to IDC, the generative A.I. explosion complicates matters. First, it said in its report, IT decision-makers are now “questioning where to prioritize budgets.” But there is probably also something of a PC revolution just over the horizon, as regular computers take on some of the A.I. tasks that currently require sending data back and forth between the desktop and the cloud—particularly where time-sensitive things like gaming or translation are involved.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is certainly pushing that narrative, saying a month ago in an earnings call that “we see the A.I. PC as a critical inflection point for the PC market over the coming years that will rival the importance of Centrino and Wi-Fi in the early 2000s.” (Intel's Centrino computing platform was at the time particularly notable for its integrated wireless networking capabilities.) Intel’s Meteor Lake processors, due next month, are its first that are designed to run A.I. applications locally.
But IDC’s analysts are also on board, writing: “While A.I.-capable PCs are not ready today, they are coming and have shifted some of the discussion around device purchasing within businesses.”
Also of note in IDC’s analysis: AMD and Apple both have rising shares of the PC processor market, standing at 11% and 5% respectively last year. The analysts wrote that we could be seeing “some of the biggest shifts in commercial PC history.”
PCs are becoming interesting again—who knew? More news below.
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David Meyer
