- Shipments of AI PCs to represent 22% of all PC sfipments in 2024.
- Shipments of GenAI Smartphones to represent 22% of basic and premium smartphones.
- PC shipments to grow 3.5% while smartphone shipments to grow 4.2% in 2024.
Research firm Gartner estimates that 240 million GenAI smartphones and 54.5 million AI PCs will be shipped globally by the end of 2024, totaling 295 million units compared to 29 million units in 2023.
Gartner defines AI PCs as PCs that are equipped with dedicated AI accelerators or cores, neural processing units (NPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs) or tensor processing units (TPUs), designed to optimize and accelerate AI tasks on the device. This provides improved performance and efficiency in handling AI and GenAI workloads without relying on external servers or cloud services.
GenAI smartphones are designed smartphones equipped with hardware and software capabilities that enable seamless integration and efficient execution of GenAI-driven features and applications on the smartphone. These smartphones are capable of locally running a base or fine-tuned AI model that generates new derived versions of content, strategies, designs and methods. Examples of this include Gemini Nano from Google, ERNIE from Baidu and OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Even research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) data show that shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) PCs to grow from nearly 50 million units in 2024 to more than 167 million in 2027.
Hype reaches fever pitch
“The rapid adoption of on-device GenAI capabilities and AI processors will eventually become a standard requirement for technology vendors,” Ranjit Atwal, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, said.
“This ubiquity will pose challenges for vendors in differentiating themselves from competitors, making it harder to create unique selling points and drive increased revenues.”
The integration of AI into PCs is not expected to drive end-user spending beyond anticipated price increases. Business device buyers will demand compelling reasons to invest.
However, it will take time for software providers to harness the power of on-device AI and clearly demonstrate its enhanced benefits.
The PC market returned to growth in the fourth quarter of 2023 after eight consecutive quarters of decline.
“As we enter a new year, the hype around generative AI has reached a fever pitch, and the PC industry is running fast to capitalise on the expected benefits of bringing AI capabilities down from the cloud to the client,” Tom Mainelli, group vice president, Devices and Consumer Research, said.
“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.”
Catalyst for transformative shifts
Gartner estimates overall PC shipments will total 250.4 million units in 2024, a 3.5 per cent increase from 2023. On-device AI should rejuvenate the marketing of PCs through 2024 and help sustain existing anticipated replacement cycles, negating some of the negative effects of a disruptive socioeconomic environment.
Like AI PCs, GenAI smartphones will not bolster smartphone demand until 2027.
“The enhancements to smartphones evolve the current experiences with cameras and voice integration, but these capabilities are expected by users rather than demonstrating a new groundbreaking functionality. Users have the same expectation for the functionality of GenAI on their smartphone,” Atwal said.
“They are unlikely to pay a premium for GenAI smartphones without the availability of any groundbreaking applications.”
The catalyst for transformative shifts in user experience lies in the advancement of smaller versions of large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for smartphones. This evolution will transform smartphones into even more intuitive companions capable of comprehending and responding to human language and visual cues, which will elevate the overall user experience to new heights.
The smartphone market recorded its first quarter of growth in the fourth quarter of 2023 after nine consecutive quarters of decline.
In 2024, worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to grow 4.2 per cent, totaling 1.2 billion units year over year.
“We should not interpret the growth in smartphone shipments as a full-fledged recovery,” he said.
“It is more accurate to view it as a stabilisation of lower level of units, which are nearly 60 million lower than in 2022.”