A wall of indifference for AI PCs and smartphones

Even as demand for high-performance AI servers continues to outstrip supply, interest in AI PCs and smartphones has hit a wall of indifference with earlier predictions of rapid market growth in Q4 this year being pushed out to some time in 2025.

The much-ballyhooed rollout of Microsoft CoPilot+ PCs featuring the Snapdragon X Elite processor just three months ago has fizzled out so badly that just about the only thing Qualcomm executives have to talk about now is that laptop prices will go down to sub-$800 price points.

Ironically, Intel appears to be doing a lot better than Qualcomm with its new Lunar Lake processors even though laptops featuring the platform have not yet been anointed as CoPilot+ PCs by Microsoft. Their battery life is also far better than originally expected even though Intel has stuck to its traditional x86 architecture despite all the claims that Arm was about to redefine the PC as we know it.

The launch of the Apple iPhone 16 with its vague promises of AI jam tomorrow as long as you live in the right location hasn’t done much to inject excitement into the smartphone market either despite a reasonably warm reception from the hardcore remnants of its user base. It’s really not that long ago since a new iPhone launch was a newsworthy event. These days, it barely merits a mention.

The biggest problem with AI PCs and AI smartphones is that for all their much-vaunted intelligence, they lack a killer feature. While applications that help you to write short emails, read a summary of a meeting that you couldn’t be bothered to listen to properly, and even erase the face of the idiot you just broke up with from a photo might be useful, they are not enough in themselves to set off a stampede of eager consumers.

Unless or until AI client devices can enable you to do something amazing like shoot and produce a blockbuster movie, demand will remain anemic with all the growth coming from the server side.