Analyst(s): Olivier Blanchard
Publication Date: September 24, 2025
Olivier Blanchard, Research Director at The Futurum Group, shares his insights on the six most likely category challengers threatening incumbents with disruption in the AI devices space in 2026.
Key Points:
- The current wave of large-scale AI-driven disruption is creating smaller pockets where incumbents, despite their immense market power, can be put on the defensive by clever, aggressive challengers.
- These pockets of disruption are where some of the most interesting and consequential shifts in the balance of power between incumbents and challengers are taking place. They are potential harbingers of market shifts, not unlike the iPhone’s impact on Blackberry, Netflix’s impact on cable TV providers, and music streaming’s impact on compact discs.
- This report highlights six of the more consequential potential market shifts currently in the making, where incumbent technology companies find themselves on the cusp of disruption (and potentially displacement) by smart, hungry challengers seizing on the AI opportunity quickly and decisively.
Overview:
Beyond AI’s massive impact on the tech sector, smaller but no less significant waves of disruption, driven by challengers taking on entrenched incumbents, have begun to impact the sector’s market dynamics. This report highlights six such examples, all of which touch on intelligent devices or the automotive sector.
First is the deepening partnership between NVIDIA and MediaTek: Despite being leaders in their respective fields—NVIDIA in GPUs and MediaTek in mobile SoCs—neither has been a dominant force in key emerging categories such as AI PCs, automotive platforms, or laptop SOCs. This partnership allows them to combine forces and leverage their collective expertise, financial resources, and industry connections to challenge established rivals.
Together, they co-developed the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, a powerful Arm-based SoC that powers a new class of desktop “AI supercomputer” that opens the door to interesting challenger-themed opportunities in the burgeoning AI PC market. In the automotive sector, the pair also hopes to take on Qualcomm with the Dimensity Auto cockpit platforms. The collaboration also extends to gaming laptops and display technology, where the duo is integrating NVIDIA’s G-SYNC into MediaTek’s scaler chips to create a more affordable, high-end monitor experience. This partnership demonstrates how two incumbents can operate in startup mode to disrupt markets ripe for a market share grab.
Second, the long-standing rivalry between AMD and Intel is starting to feel less stalled than it used to be. For over two years now, AMD has been on the offensive, leveraging its EPYC and Ryzen processors to chip away at Intel’s dominance in the data center and PC markets. In the past 12 months alone, AMD has made significant gains, with its server CPU unit share and revenue share experiencing steady gains against Intel. This shift is even more pronounced in desktop CPUs, where AMD’s unit share in Q2 2025 surged by over 9% compared to last year, and its revenue share climbed by more than 20%. These numbers signal that AMD’s strategy of focusing on superior architecture, greater energy efficiency, and a robust AI platform is directly disrupting Intel’s market position. And while Intel still maintains a significant lead in the laptop segment, AMD’s momentum suggests a significant shift is underway, with Intel being forced into a reactive, defensive posture.
Third, Arm continues to threaten the dominance of the x86 incumbency in both the data center and PC markets. Arm’s core advantages—power-efficient RISC architecture and flexible licensing model—are enabling key players such as Apple, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm to develop custom processors that directly compete with Intel and AMD on their own turf. In the data center, hyperscalers are increasingly adopting Arm-based CPUs to improve power efficiency and lower their total cost of ownership (TCO). In the PC market, Apple’s M-series chips proved that Arm could deliver high-end performance in laptops. This paved the way for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform, which launched as the foundation for the new Windows Copilot+ AI PCs, further accelerating Arm’s disruption of x86 in the PC market in the last year.
These are just a few examples of the market shifts occurring in small, sometimes imperceptible ways, across the intelligent devices ecosystem and its adjacent segments. These pre-emptive breadcrumbs serve as early indicators of potentially significant challenges to incumbents by challengers that could begin to redraw the borders of the technology sector and alter the incumbent-to-challenger balance of power across critical market segments in 2026.
The full report is available to subscribers on the Futurum Intelligence Platform. Non-subscribers can click here for more information.
About the Futurum Intelligent Devices Practice
The Futurum Intelligent Devices Practice provides actionable, objective insights for market leaders and their teams so they can respond to emerging opportunities and innovate. Public access to our coverage can be seen here. Follow news and updates from the Futurum Practice on LinkedIn and X. Visit the Futurum Newsroom for more information and insights.
Author Information
Olivier Blanchard is Research Director, Intelligent Devices. He 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.
