According to beancounters at Gartner Research, personal computers loaded with AI hardware and software are expected to reach 77.8 million units in 2025, taking up 31 per cent of the global PC market. The Big G reckons AI PCs will break the 50 per cent sales barrier by 2026, though their original estimates were clearly a little too optimistic.
The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street are betting on AI PC growth, but the rollout is being held up by tariffs and people simply not buying new gear.
Gartner senior director of research Ranjit Atwal said: “AI PCs are reshaping the market, but their adoption in 2025 is slowing because of tariffs and pauses in PC buying caused by market uncertainty.”
Still, he believes users will splash out on AI PCs to keep up with the growing push to embed AI at the edge.
Another report, this time from IDC, claims the share of AI PCs in use will rocket from a piddly five per cent in 2023 to 94 per cent by 2028. The drive, apparently, is to get around the cost and security mess of cloud AI.
Gartner expects Arm-based laptops to claw into the consumer space as software support improves, while x86 on Windows will rule business devices, taking 71 per cent of AI laptop shipments in 2025. Arm’s slice will sit around 24 per cent.
Atwal reckons PC makers need to move beyond stuffing silicon in boxes and start offering something punters can use.
“The future of AI PCs is in customisation. It lets users configure their devices with the apps, features and functions they want.”
That said, the public doesn’t seem all that sold. Another set of number crunchers working for Forrester Research found that while 55 per cent of US online adults appreciate the privacy benefits of local AI, half still haven’t a clue why they’d need an AI PC.
A meaty 61 per cent think they don’t use AI enough to justify it, and more than 60 per cent are sitting on their wallets until the price comes down. Only 33 per cent plan to upgrade sooner.
The idea behind an AI PC is to shift AI workloads from the cloud to local machines, which is supposed to be more secure and efficient. According to IDC’s survey, the top features punters want are personalised experiences (77 per cent), better privacy (75 per cent), and tighter security (74 per cent).
These boxes include neural processing units (NPUs), GPUs and CPUs designed to do AI tricks like recognising your face or pretending to understand what you said. Intel’s Meteor Lake, AMD’s Ryzen AI, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite are all queued up to pump out hardware over the next couple of years.
Chipzilla and Nvidia are still well in the game, with Nvidia’s RTX GPUs doing the heavy AI lifting in generative models and deep learning. Even Apple has shoved some basic AI nonsense into macOS, though only when it’s sure you’ll pay extra for it.
AI features are already being wedged into operating systems like Windows 11, complete with Copilot, voice input and all the bells and whistles you didn’t ask for. Microsoft Office has its Copilot and Adobe is tossing in Firefly. These apps lean on NPUs and GPUs to do things like summarising your meetings or jazzing up your PowerPoint slides.
Gartner reckons 40 per cent of software outfits will focus on AI PC tools by the end of 2026, up from a barely-there two per cent in 2024. They expect small language models to live and run on your machine, giving you AI power without handing your data over to some server farm.
These local models can be built from scratch using open-source frameworks. That means no permissions needed, full access to the guts, and the freedom to mess with it however you want.
Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group's senior vice president Steve Long told Computerworld these things are more than just marketing fluff.
“AI PCs give time back to the user. Whether it’s generating marketing content, summarising meetings, or streamlining workflows… these devices handle the heavy lifting so teams can stay focused on higher-value work.”
He reckons AI PCs can flag threats, predict failures and personalise your experience so well it feels like your machine knows your star sign. “It’s like having a digital assistant who gets smarter every day and never sleeps,” Long said.