Opinion: Why 2025 Will Be An Important Year For AI PCs

The continuing development of third-party applications and features, combined with the slow but ongoing rollouts of features from Microsoft and Apple, point to the possibility that the nascent but growing AI PC category will face an important test in 2025.

It’s almost the end of the year, and vendors have yet to make a definitive case for the existence of the AI PC. That shouldn’t be seen as a controversial statement because we’re much more likely to see vendors pull this off in 2025.

After all, the two flagship feature sets for AI PCs—Copilot+ from Microsoft and Apple Intelligence from, well, Apple—are not yet widely available to all users. And we have yet to see a groundswell of applications from ISVs that have found widespread traction.

While Apple Intelligence is set to become available in all Macs powered by Apple’s M-series processors, Copilot+ features are only expected to be available in a growing subset of PCs with a neural processing unit (NPU) in the system-on-chip. (Copilot+ should not be confused with Microsoft’s Copilot offerings, which are largely cloud-based right now.)

Announced back in June, Apple Intelligence became available in beta form in late October for Mac computers with M-series processors, which date back to 2020. This means that users need to have a recent Mac and must sign up for a wait list to gain access to the features, which include things like Writing Tools and an enhanced Siri voice assistant, but they won’t have access to other features until a future update.

It’s not yet known when Apple Intelligence will become generally available, and it’s not clear if Apple plans to turn the features on by default at that point.

The Copilot+ features from Microsoft, on the other hand, have had a somewhat slow and bumpy rollout, which hasn’t been completely intentional.

When Microsoft announced the first batch of Copilot+ PCs in May, it did so with Qualcomm as the exclusive chip launch partner. As a result, the initial set of devices from Microsoft and OEMs only used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors.

While Qualcomm has touted performance and efficiency advantages for the Snapdragon X processors over competing chips from Intel and AMD, the company’s silicon is based on the Arm instruction set architecture, which, unlike the x86 architecture underpinning Intel and AMD processors, doesn’t have full compatibility with Windows applications yet.

It’s important to note that Qualcomm has made significant progress in enabling native versions of Windows software, ranging from all the Microsoft Office applications and those from other big names like Adobe, Zoom and Cisco, to apps from smaller players. But there are still gaps in software support, with an emulation layer supporting some but not all x86-based applications—and the emulated performance isn’t perfect.

This has, for now, limited the appeal of Arm-based Copilot+ PCs.

Microsoft’s Flagship Copilot+ PC Feature Gets Recalled

Then there’s the issue of Recall, which was supposed to be the flagship feature of Copilot+ PCs at launch in June until Microsoft delayed it to beef up the feature’s security.

With Recall, Microsoft promises to provide users with a better way of finding things they accessed or viewed on their computer. The feature accomplishes this by letting users perform a natural language search against screenshots that are taken every few seconds.

Shortly after Microsoft revealed Recall in May, privacy and security experts immediately raised concerns about how creating a central store of screenshots could give a bad actor easy access to all sorts of sensitive information.

The concerns prompted Microsoft to delay the release of Recall so that it could develop security safeguards and allow time for user testing. As announced by Microsoft, these security enhancements include requirements for Windows features such as virtualization-based security and Windows Hello for biometric authentication.

With this extra focus on security, Microsoft only made Recall available to members of the Windows Insider Community for testing on Arm-based Copilot+ PCs in late October.

Copilot+ Features Remain Elusive In Most New x86-Based PCs

This brings us to another reason the appeal of Copilot+ PCs has remained limited: the availability of Microsoft’s advanced AI features on x86-based systems.

When Microsoft announced the Arm-based Copilot+ PCs in May, it said any computer carrying its AI PC brand would need to have a minimum NPU performance of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to power Copilot+ features.

At the time, there were no x86-based PCs available that could reach that level of NPU performance, but that started to change in the past few months with AMD releasing its Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel releasing its Core Ultra 200V series.

However, a problem remained: Laptops powered by these AMD or Intel processors still didn’t have the ability to run Copilot+ features because Microsoft had not yet made them available for x86-based PCs, even if they met the NPU performance requirement.

That changed to a small degree on Friday when Microsoft announced that Copilot+ features like Recall, Click to Do and Paint Cocreator would become available to Windows Insider Community members for testing on these recently released x86-based PCs.

However, Microsoft has yet to say when Copilot+ features will become generally available on compatible systems. And we don’t know when that will happen with Recall on Arm-based PCs.

Still Waiting On A Big Wave Of ISV Applications

While tech vendors are working with a wide range of ISVs to bring to life new applications and features that will take advantage of AI PCs, it can be hard to find more than a handful of software offerings that are currently available.

I learned this firsthand by searching online for software that has been designed to take advantage of the NPU, which has become a requirement for AI PCs in the eyes of major vendors such as Intel, AMD, HP, Dell Technologies and Lenovo. Apple has its own version called the Neural Engine, which has been in its M-series chips since they debuted in 2020.

What I found is that even among the third-party applications and features that vendors like Microsoft have highlighted, not all have become available yet.

By checking lists of ISVs working with Microsoft, Qualcomm and Intel and then cross-checking the websites of those ISVs, I identified at least eight AI PC applications that are available on some or all AI PCs for a separate CRN article. There are likely more but finding those software offerings is not yet straightforward.

Why 2025 Will Be Important For AI PCs

The continuing development of third-party applications and features, combined with the slow but ongoing rollouts of features from Microsoft and Apple, point to the possibility that we will see some or many of these offerings become widely available in 2025.

If this happens, it will become a major test for AI PCs.

A recent survey commissioned by Intel of 6,000 adults in the United Kingdom, France and Germany found that 86 percent “have never heard of or used an AI PC.”

Assuming there is a similar level of unfamiliarity with the category in other regions, this means vendors have a lot of work to do in highlighting what AI PCs are and what software consumers and businesses can use to take advantage of such devices.

After all, consumers and businesses will have fewer options for buying PCs that aren’t marketed as AI PCs next year since such devices are expected to represent 43 percent of global PC shipments by then, according to research firm Gartner.

And they will only become more pervasive over time, with research firm IDC forecasting that AI PCs will constitute 60 percent of global PC shipments by 2027.

As more and more AI PCs land in the laps and desks of users, vendors will get to watch what happens. Will people find useful applications and features and drive adoption to the high levels of popular cloud-based AI applications like ChatGPT?

Vendors certainly hope so, which would, in turn, be a boon for their channel partners. If not, they will need to come up with new tricks to revitalize the PC category and keep the opportunities flowing for solution providers.