Austin, Texas, USA, February 7, 2025
The Latest IT Decision-Maker Study From the Futurum Group Identifies Key Drivers of AI PC Adoption in the Enterprise, and Sheds Light on the Accelerating PC Refresh Cycle’s Impact on the Competitive Landscape for PC Semiconductor Vendors
62% of AI PC adoption in the enterprise is already being driven by IT departments’ focus on future-proofing their organizations for AI, according to Futurum. This not only highlights the increasingly vital importance of AI to business competitiveness but the critical role that AI PCs are expected to play in the expanding ecosystem of AI tools and solutions.
The Futurum Group surveyed 852 Enterprise IT Decision-makers about their AI PC adoption outlook for 2025, including how AI PCs fit into their operational priorities, what their primary drivers of adoption are, what concerns and/or challenges remain on their minds, and how they are tackling new paradigms of silicon diversity and ROI. The first-of-its-kind study also sheds light on the impact that the introduction of AI PCs is already having on the PC refresh cycle and on the shifting competitive dynamics of the PC semiconductor vendor ecosystem.
One of the key findings of the study is a short list of priorities currently driving AI PC adoption in the enterprise: In addition to 62% of IT decision-makers pointing to the need to future-proof their organizations for AI, 55% also highlight the need to make their workforce more competitive as quickly as possible. While 33% also point to improvements in system performance as a critical AI PC adoption driver, nearly 48% indicate that the impending end of Windows 10 support is also a critical priority for their organizations.
This confirms that as important as future-proofing the organization for AI and equipping the workforce with the best tools possible are to AI PC adoption, nearly half of enterprises are also being driven towards it for a completely unrelated reason: The end of Windows 10 support, scheduled for Autumn 2025. What this also suggests is the high likelihood of an acceleration to the PC refresh cycle in 2025 by organizations simply looking to get ahead of the Windows 10 support cutoff date, regardless of any other advantage or motivation to upgrade to AI PCs. (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: PC Refresh Cycle Planning and PC Purchasing – Assessing Organizational Needs for PC Refresh and Purchase, 2025
“Articulating the value of AI PCs to organizations of all sizes is still a work in progress,” said Olivier Blanchard, Research Director and Practice Lead for AI Devices at Futurum. “Beyond the obvious system improvements they offer over traditional PCs, like all-day and multi-day battery life, Apple-like thermal efficiency, and noticeably faster, more efficient processors, the AI piece of the value equation remains mostly absent from the AI PC space for now. This would normally constitute a challenge to enterprise spend on AI PCs until the ROI of upgrading to these systems becomes clearer, but we also see that the transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 is driving IT organizations to accelerate their refresh cycle. This bodes well for AI PCs, and particularly Copilot+ class AI PCs, all of which so happen to be Windows 11 systems.”
Silicon Diversity: On Intel’s Market Leadership in the PC Segment
Until recently, the Windows PC market was essentially divided between two x86 PC processor vendors: Intel and AMD. That changed in May 2024 with the introduction of Windows 11 Copilot+ AI PCs on Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X platform. Snapdragon X series PC processors, like Apple’s M-series processors, are based on Arm64 architecture rather than x86, bringing Apple-like system performance to the Windows PC ecosystem. This is a significant milestone for Windows PCs and their users, who can now enjoy a best-of-both-worlds Windows PC option, with the added benefit of also being AI-ready.
However, with advantages—like multi-day battery life, thermal efficiency, faster bootups, thinner form factors, and significant processing efficiency improvements—also come disadvantages compared to tried-and-true x86 systems, especially in the commercial segment and particularly in the enterprise. Among these challenges are concerns about potential gaps in software compatibility, security, and other enterprise-specific features.
“About two-thirds of the enterprise IT departments we surveyed confirmed that they currently intend to prioritize Intel processors over AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple processors,” said Blanchard. “As impressive as Snapdragon X, AMD Ryzen AI, and Apple M3 and M4 processors are, and even considering some of the advantages that they might individually bring to AI-capable PC systems, enterprise IT departments still feel more confident sticking with Intel for now.”
Silicon Diversity: A potential market share shakeup?
While 2 in 3 enterprises indicated a strong preference for Intel, the study also found that Qualcomm’s successful entry into the PC space with Snapdragon X and the overall disruption of the PC segment by AI PCs are reshaping market share dynamics for PC processor vendors.
Despite a significant preference for Intel overall, only 56% of IT departments confirm that their first choice for AI PC processors is currently Intel—the preference for AMD lands at 19%. Qualcomm, despite being the newest entrant in the PC space, isn’t far behind, with 15% of enterprise IT decision-makers reporting that Snapdragon X will be their first choice of AI PC processors this year. Apple falls to 4th place, with only 11% of departments listing M3 and M4 processors as their first choice.
“The biggest winner of this market share reshuffle is obviously Qualcomm right now,” explains Blanchard, “but Windows-on-Arm is going to need to deliver some significant advantages against x86 systems in order to solidify those potential market share gains, let alone expand them in the coming years. Intel and AMD’s processors are already extremely competitive against Snapdragon, and given x86’s known quantity advantage in the enterprise segment, we could see Intel and AMD regain some momentum in the coming months.”
Silicon Diversity: Organizations welcome having more processor options
Despite bringing more complexity to PC purchasing decisions, silicon diversity is being received as a mostly positive development by the enterprise, with 83% of organizations reporting being excited about having more processor options to choose from.
Concerns and uncertainty about AI PCs remain, however
The study also reveals some of the most top-of-mind concerns and unknowns from IT decision-makers about AI PCs. Among them: 36% report being mostly concerned with the higher unit price of AI PCs, and 28% list additional AI-related costs (like subscriptions to AI feature-enabling services) as a top concern. Only 28% of organizations report being very concerned about the ability of AI PCs to run critical enterprise software natively (29% for running the same software via emulation), and 25% are generally worried that AI PCs may not yet be enterprise-ready.
On-Device Agentic AI: “Where’s the beef?”
Only 30% of organizations report being mostly concerned about the absence of on-device AI applications and use cases, but 68% of organizations report being concerned about this value gap. This suggests that while organizations trust that AI PCs will eventually be worth the investment, their value equation remains, for the time being, mostly forward-looking. The concern is valid: Until visible on-device agentic AI applications and features make their way into the PC ecosystem, AI PCs will essentially remain AI-ready PCs. At some point, and soon, PC OEMs, Microsoft, and ISVs will have to deliver the value of on-device AI for PCs in the way that the Mobile ecosystem has.
“The missing piece of the AI PC value equation remains, ironically, the on-device AI part,” said Blanchard. “We know that productivity gains and future-proofing for AI that AI PCs promise to deliver to organizations are more important to them than overall PC system performance. This means that it is imperative that agentic AI features built into productivity and creativity applications, as well as the ability to train AI models on-device, make their way to users no later than this year.”
Futurum clients can read more in the report “1H 2025 AI Devices Decision Maker Survey Report”. Learn more in the complimentary Futurum webinar “What Mature Organizations Do Differently for AI Success.”
About Futurum Intelligence for Market Leaders
Futurum Intelligence’s AI Devices IQ service provides actionable insight from analysts, reports, and interactive visualization datasets, helping leaders drive their organizations through transformation and business growth. Subscribers can log in at https://app.futurumgroup.com/, while non-subscribers can find more information at https://info.futurumgroup.com/ai-pcs.
Follow news and updates from Futurum on X and LinkedIn using #Futurum. Visit the Futurum Newsroom for more information and insights.
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Futurum Research 2025: Key Issues and Predictions
DeepSeek Disrupts AI Market with Low-Cost Training and Open Source, Yet Many Questions Loom
How Lenovo’s New ThinkPad X9 Aura Editions Advance AI Features in Premium PCs
Author Information
Research Director Olivier Blanchard covers edge semiconductors and intelligent AI-capable devices for Futurum. In addition to having co-authored several books about digital transformation and AI with Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman, Blanchard brings considerable experience demystifying new and emerging technologies, advising clients on how best to future-proof their organizations, and helping maximize the positive impacts of technology disruption while mitigating their potentially negative effects. Follow his extended analysis on X and LinkedIn.
