 |
AI PCS: HYPE vs. REALITY By Berit Anderson
Why Read: A strategic look at AI PCs, their current hype cycle, and where companies are really going with them in the coming years. _____ I think what makes AI different from other technologies is that it's going to bring humans and machines closer together. AI is sometimes incorrectly framed as machines replacing humans. It's not about machines replacing humans, but machines augmenting humans. - Robin Bordoli, Partner, On January 10, after eight consecutive quarters of decline in the PC market, Gartner made an announcement that echoed through the halls of Dell, HP, Apple, and Lenovo: "Worldwide PC shipments totaled 63.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2023," it crowed, "a 0.3% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022."
The increase was small by percentage but was particularly significant given the PC doom spiral of the last few years. And the reason was clear - AI PCs. (An AI PC is any laptop or desktop computer outfitted with neural processing units - NPUs - specifically designed to handle AI tasks on the machine without needing to rely on compute power in the cloud.
|
